


In Search of Rain

by Yinza



Series: Those Called by the Storm [2]
Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Found Family, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27646090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yinza/pseuds/Yinza
Summary: Nearly two months after the defeat of Sephiroth, Yuffie rejoins AVALANCHE in their mission to take down Shinra for good, and to rebuild a scarred world.
Relationships: Barret Wallace/Jessie
Series: Those Called by the Storm [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021434
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a sequel to "Those Called by the Storm" and builds on an existing AU, so I can't guarantee it will make sense as a standalone piece!

Yuffie crouched in the brush of the riverbank and studied the bridge. A Shinra checkpoint, just like Jessie had said. Military trucks blocked any easy passage across, and soldiers actively patrolled its span. There was no approach that wouldn't leave her exposed; the undergrowth thinned out not far from her position.

A wind rustled the branches overhead, carrying off a few more autumn leaves and reminding her of how cold the water would be, even if the weather was milder here than back home. An early snowstorm had come to Wutai just before she'd left, rendering the slopes of Da-chao nigh impassable. She hadn't made her usual hike the day she'd gone, and she wondered if the gods had noticed her absence.

Most people who still believed in them would say that no one was watching. That the gods had abandoned Wutai. Yuffie didn't think so. They were waiting, maybe, for a people to be proud of.

Wutai's surrender had come in the spring, she remembered. The beauty of the trees blossoming along the riverside marred by military trucks and uniformed soldiers and the sting of tears blurring her vision. Back during the war, she'd imagined herself fighting the Shinra so many times, but when she'd at last come face to face with them, all she'd been able to do was ball up her small fists and glare at them through teary eyes.

She was stronger now, but taking on the soldiers on the bridge was still a bad idea. She could wait for nightfall to sneak past them, but that was a waste of a day; it wasn't even noon. Detouring to another bridge upriver would cost her time, too, and there was no guarantee she wouldn't run into the same problem.

Yuffie heaved a silent sigh and crept back downriver, continuing on until the bridge fell out of sight around a bend.

She squatted on the bank, staring at the water.

It wasn't a _fast_ current, and she'd swum it before, but that was during the summer months she'd spent familiarizing herself with the lands outside of Junon.

How come materia had to be so specialized for fighting? she wondered. Why couldn't there be magic for getting across a river without freezing your ass off? Hadn't the Ancients done all sorts of other stuff with it?

She thought of the magic that had transformed the Black Materia into the Temple, the magic that had hidden the altar where they had all prayed together for Holy. That magic was so much more powerful and complex than just hurling a chunk of ice at somebody. She wondered if Aeris would ever be able to figure it out.

She wondered if _she_ could.

Yuffie stared hard at the river. No way did she think she could make a bridge out of _nothing_ , but ice would hold her, if she could just freeze it, just for a few minutes. She knew how it felt to cast ice magic with materia, and she knew how it felt to use her healing magic, without it. The blessing of the water god.

_Come on, Leviathan. Show me how to do this._

The flow of the river shifted, she thought it slowed.

On the edge of her vision, on the far bank, someone stood watching her. Yuffie snapped her head up, but the figure was gone.

No one there.

She sat staring for a long minute, then shook it off.

The river was flowing normally again. Yuffie tried focusing again, but nothing happened. Maybe that had been her imagination, too. With a sigh, she sat down to pull off her shoes.

She stripped down to her underwear, and did her best to hold her pack out of the water as she swam across, because she only had a waterproof case for the important things. She was shivering when she climbed out onto the far shore, and she made a hasty fire, keeping it small so the smoke wouldn't attract attention. Fishing out her canteen, she set her water to heat while she dried off. It wasn't tea, but it would help. Yuffie bundled herself up in nearly every dry stitch she had and sat for a while sipping her hot water and looking out on the river.

She'd learned her healing magic from Godo, when she'd been a lot younger--young enough that believing in things had come easy. Back then, she'd still believed in _him_ , after all. But time and again the war had called him and all the other masters away, and they hadn't passed on anything else to her before they'd come back--defeated, disillusioned, doubting whether the gods their magic came from even existed.

But Yuffie had seen Leviathan. It had come to her, when they'd fought Sephiroth at the Northern Crater.

Why it had come for her, and not for Wutai, she still didn't know.

Maybe they'd been arrogant in the war, and thought they didn't need the gods. They hadn't realized what they were up against, Shinra and its manufactured magic, its soldiers led by some science experiment gone wrong.

Not that Yuffie was big on relying on anyone for help, but it'd be stupid to turn down the help of a god.

_Are you in this with me?_ she wondered, watching the river. _I hope so. The Planet still needs our help, right?_

She got moving again before too long. It was still a solid two-day hike to Junon, and she'd have to keep an eye out for Shinra patrols.

The forests outside of Junon should have been familiar territory for her, but they felt different now. This late in the year, most of the leaves had fallen, carpeting the ground beneath her feet and leaving the branches bare overhead. The buzzing of the summer insects had gone, silenced by some recent frost, and even the birdsong had changed.

Yuffie couldn't help remembering the last time she'd come this way, the same day she'd first encountered AVALANCHE. They'd all been so distracted by the very existence of nature around them that she'd taken them for easy marks. She'd had to revise her strategy after they'd caught her.

A lot had happened since then, and now... she kind of missed them.

Which was stupid, since she'd seen most of them yesterday at the birthday party Barret had thrown for her. It had _actually_ succeeded in catching her by surprise, but she really should have known better when Tifa had specifically invited her to Kalm on November 20th. Dead giveaway.

But Yuffie had always been a loner. The friendship thing was new. When she'd gone home to Wutai and resigned herself to going more than a month without seeing any of them, she hadn't expected the letters either.

Not even a week had passed before the first one had shown up. Barret must have written it on board the Highwind, and posted it the second he'd reached Cosmo Canyon.

And the effort she'd had to put into deciphering it told her that he'd been right-handed, when he'd had a right hand. The envelope had included a pen drawing from Marlene depicting her and Yuffie (roughly the same size) riding on Barret's shoulders. A quick note from Tifa in the corner read simply 'welcome to the family.'

Most of them had written her letters, with varying frequency. Jessie's were sporadic, but long when they came, full of details about the latest and greatest plans for the recovery of Midgar. Tifa wrote every Monday like clockwork, letting her know how everyone was doing and keeping her apprised of what she deemed the most important news. Aeris usually included a shorter letter in the same envelope, relating funny anecdotes from their life, like the ongoing saga of their landlady struggling to understand which one of them was Marlene's mother.

Letters from Midgar had come rarer, but she'd been surprised to get them from Wedge, of all people, detailing AVALANCHE's efforts there. Zack contributed some illustrations that somehow demonstrated _less_ artistic talent than a four-year-old, complete with labels that she later realized were in Cloud's handwriting, after he included a post-script apologizing for the awful drawings.

She'd gotten exactly one short letter from Nanaki, which she couldn't really fault him for. Blotchy in parts, he must've written it painstakingly with claw and inkwell. He might have dictated, but she was grateful he hadn't. Unlike the others, he hadn't sent her news, but rather words of encouragement. He thought she had the makings of the leader Wutai needed, just as he hoped he could fill the role of guardian for his beloved canyon.

It was embarrassing. But Yuffie had stashed it away with the rest of them in her most secret of hiding places, where she kept her treasures.

She hoped Nanaki was holding up all right. He hadn't made it to her party, not because of the distance, but because Bugenhagen had fallen ill. He said it wasn't bad, but honestly Bugenhagen was so old it was a miracle he hadn't croaked already, and Yuffie wondered if Nanaki really _got_ that. His species was supposed to be super long-lived, so maybe a hundred years was nothing to him.

What would the world even be like in a hundred years? Even Marlene would probably have kicked the bucket by then, and... would the Planet itself even be there? Bugenhagen hadn't thought so. She remembered.

Vincent would probably still be around, she told herself. The absolute _worst_ option for company, but better than nothing, right?

In the end, he was the only one she hadn't seen or heard from, which came as no surprise. Apparently Nanaki had seen him a few weeks ago, and Jessie had shown her the postcard he'd sent. 'Still alive,' it read. He hadn't even signed the damn thing.

For a hot second, Yuffie wondered if she'd be getting any letters in Junon. But even if the Shinra _were_ allowing mail in from the outside, they'd probably inspect everything first, and she wouldn't want them reading even the most innocuous letter.

Besides, Tifa had gotten her a phone.

Did that mean Barret was going to start calling her every day, like he'd done for Marlene when they'd been on the road? Gods, she hoped not. As much as she appreciated having a dad who was more involved than Godo, that was _way_ too much. She needed her space.

By nightfall, Yuffie knew from the terrain that she was nearing the southern edge of the forest. She made camp among the trees, and overhead, the stars shone between the tangle of bare branches. She wouldn't see much of them in Junon, and she wondered if the people who lived there even noticed. Most people never bothered to look up.

Which tended to make her job easier, but it was sad, sometimes, too.

She closed her eyes, and night sounds kept the silence away.

The next day she was hiking across open country, but avoiding the road meant she didn't make much better time. It was late in the morning the following day that she found herself approaching Junon, and the dreary fishing town swallowed up by its shadow. The ocean breeze carried with it a Mako scent, overriding any familiarity in the sea air.

The road was clear of Shinra soldiers, for the moment, so Yuffie made her way into the village and perched herself on an obliging roof to survey the heightened security on the entrance to the upper city.

There were five men guarding that big elevator door now, and she waited through a midday shift change to be certain of it. While she watched, a patrol came in from the road, escorting a knot of civilian travellers, and the men on duty ran all of their IDs, even the soldiers, not trusting the uniforms. Considering the split in the company, it made sense; people had mostly made up their minds by now, whether to side with Rufus or Reeve, but the uniforms were still the same.

Obviously, her old routine of bribing her favorite guard to let her through was out, but she had some options here.

Option one: she could throw on her Shinra uniform and put the fake ID Jessie had made her to the test. That one was risky, though. As much as she trusted Jessie, the media blackout Rufus had put in place meant their intel on Junon was patchy. A lone soldier coming in from patrol was already suspicious, and if Shinra was smart, which they were occasionally, then they'd distributed her description to their soldiers, and they might recognize her even if the ID was good. Yuffie didn't want to tip them off that she was here so soon.

Option two: she could call up Sash, as Jessie had suggested, and enlist her help. That meant relying on her skills... and Yuffie had met the ex-SOLDIER all of once, during their victory celebration at Cosmo Canyon. Sash had still been recovering from the whole 'clone' experience at the time, and she didn't exactly stick out as capable in Yuffie's memory.

That left option three: rely on her own skills.

Her eyes travelled up from the elevator, noting the concrete ledge of its frame. A pipe stuck out from the wall above, disappearing into it not far from the cliff side. Climbable, she thought.

Yuffie changed into her Shinra uniform as a preemptive measure, secured her pack across her back, and crossed the roof to the cliff face behind her. It was a short climb across the rock to the wall of the base, and she caught the pipe without any trouble. From the pipe, she leapt down to the protruding frame of the elevator, and waited for her moment.

The next shift change wouldn't be for a while, she thought, and that was how she wanted it. She needed someone coming down, but not going back up. Over the lip of the concrete ledge, she could make out the soldiers below her. None of them ever so much as glanced up.

She heard the elevator moving through the wall behind her before the doors opened below. Voices, someone greeting the soldiers as they stepped out. Another patrol stepped into view below her, and beneath the sound of their boots was the mechanical click of a button being pressed. As the heavy doors began to close again, Yuffie dropped down, hanging from the ledge by her hands, and swung through into the empty elevator.

"What was that?" said one of the guards as her boots hit the floor of the elevator, but the closing doors narrowed the view inside, and she rolled out of sight as they turned to look. Yuffie hit the up button, the doors shut completely, and the elevator clanked into motion.

Yuffie stood, straightened her pack across her shoulders, and adjusted her uniform.

"Still got it," she said to herself.

The elevator opened onto the base up top, and Yuffie stepped out in plain view, unconcerned if anyone saw her now. They'd have to assume that the guards below had already cleared her, and she belonged here. She walked down the hall, exited the base, and stepped out onto the main street.

Junon had been alive with people and noise the last time she'd passed through it, parade music blaring over the loudspeakers, but Yuffie had spent enough time in the city to know something of its usual mood, and today felt different from that, too. She couldn't put her finger on it exactly. She studied the passersby from behind the anonymity of her Shinra helmet, and tried to figure it out.

The streets were more crowded than they had been. Not like Kalm, with the tent city that had sprung up outside its walls and the street vendors clamoring in its square--it was Midgar's rich who'd fled to Junon, seeking the familiar comforts of Shinra's protection and Shinra's Mako. Not that Midgar was entirely without, but AVALANCHE had talked Reeve down to a minimal power output. Even folks on the plate had to put up with scheduled brownouts.

No sign of that here. It was broad daylight, and still light shone out of open windows, neon signs advertised shops and restaurants, and the latest Mako-powered cars flashed past.

Parade or no, Junon had always felt to her like people making a lot of clamor, trying to ignore the world around them. The base and the harbor dominated the waterfront, distancing residents even from a decent view of the ocean they lived right next to. That seemed to be the Shinra way of things: wall yourself off from the Planet and shout about how great you had it. Technology above all else, to replace all else.

Yuffie wouldn't exactly call that progress.

She knew the streets well enough to navigate to the address Jessie had given her without having to ask for directions. A nondescript apartment building some long blocks away from the bustling main streets. Nothing in Junon was old enough to look run-down, but Yuffie had the feeling this building would get there sooner than the others.

She went in through the front entrance and took the stairs up to the third floor. Two doors down, she knocked.

A woman answered and stood leaning against the doorframe. Dark-skinned, her black hair now in tight braids, her frame more muscular than Yuffie remembered--but still leaner than Tifa.

Her hands were bare, exposing the tattoo on one: the numeral X. Yuffie could remember the first time she'd seen it, as Zack had carried the unconscious black-cloaked figure out of the hole where the Temple of the Ancients had been. That place had given Yuffie all manner of creeps, but Sash didn't seem to remember any of it.

"Hey, Sash," said Yuffie, finally pulling off her helmet. "How's it goin'?"

"Yuffie," Sash said in recognition. She stepped aside, opening the door wider. "Come on in."

It was a small apartment--clean but otherwise unremarkable, almost like a hotel room in its utter lack of personality. Yuffie knew getting turned over to Hojo as a lab rat must have come with the loss of everything she'd owned, and that Sash was working with the limited funds of AVALANCHE, but _still_. The only things to suggest anyone even lived here were some papers on the kitchen table and a coat hung up by the door.

"Jessie's fake ID must've worked out," Sash remarked as she shut the door behind Yuffie and turned to face her. "I'm impressed."

"Nah, I snuck past 'em," Yuffie corrected. "Didn't think this was the time to test it."

"Hm."

"Now you're doubly impressed, aren'tcha?"

"Sure," said Sash. She didn't exactly _sound_ impressed, but Yuffie couldn't detect any sarcasm in the acknowledgment either.

Well, that was all right. At least she wasn't like their new pilot, Cid, who Shera had introduced her to on the flight over from Wutai. On her way off the bridge, she'd caught him refer to her as 'underwhelming,' and it still pissed her off. Maybe she would've cut a more impressive figure if they'd met on solid ground, where human beings were _supposed_ to be. Underwhelming! What was so great about him anyway?

Yuffie dropped her pack onto the kitchen table with a thud and unzipped it to start unpacking. Despite her rough treatment, it seemed like the most fragile of her belongings had survived more-or-less in tact.

"...you brought a plant?" said Sash.

"For some reason Aeris wasn't too confident in your interior decorating skills," Yuffie replied as she freed the pot from the last of its cushioning and set it in the center of the table. The single white bloom left on the plant was looking pretty sad, but the leaves seemed all right.

"In my defense, I've been here a week," Sash said.

"You could've picked up a few things to stick on the walls or something."

Sash just shrugged.

"Well, I've at least got an ID in here for you, too, once I dig it out. Jessie told me they stuck you with some kind of special Midgar refugee card when you came through?"

"Yeah. They bought the story of me not having ID, plenty in the slums never registered for them, but the damn thing's so restrictive. They want me to apply for a permit just to leave the city."

"Guess they're pretty suspicious of folks coming here from Midgar." Yuffie grinned at her. "After all, you could be a spy for AVALANCHE."

Sash returned the grin with a smile, confirming she wasn't without a sense of humor. "You never know."

"Speaking of, I've gotta get outta this damn uniform before I do anything else."

"Bedroom's right through there."

"Good to know," Yuffie said. She'd worn the uniform over her clothes, but she grabbed her pack anyway and followed Sash's gesture. She pushed the door open into another tiny room. "I guess we're both bunking in here?"

She hadn't expected any differently, knowing how cheap AVALANCHE could be, and a glance confirmed it for her. There was a bed shoved into one corner and a mattress made up in the one opposite it, without space between for much more than a nightstand. There was absolutely nothing on the walls.

"That's the deal," said Sash from behind her. "You mind the mattress? I figure it's pretty much what you're used to anyway."

"Pretty much. Sure." Yuffie cast her a skeptical look for that one, but shrugged. "I can deal."

She set down her pack at the end of the mattress and left her uniform and boots in a heap beside it. She fished out the tea Shera had given her before returning to the kitchen. Bracing herself for further disappointment, she started browsing the cupboards.

Well, at least Sash had clearly been to a grocery store. Judging by what she'd bought, maybe she even knew how to cook. She sure couldn't be expecting Yuffie to do it for her; she'd managed to keep that skill a secret from her teammates until Tifa had found her out a few days ago.

Not that she'd really put effort into it. She'd just never volunteered and nobody had put two-and-two together from the fact that she'd spent months on her own before they ran into her.

"So," Yuffie said as she found a place for her tea, "since it wasn't decorating, what _have_ you managed to do with the past week?"

"You don't want to get settled in first?"

"I'm settled," Yuffie said. She let the cabinet slam shut and turned around. "Aren't you ex-SOLDIER? Where's the professionalism?"

"Isn't Zack the only ex-SOLDIER you've known?"

"Well, yeah. The guy's so chatty it's hard to imagine him ever being in the military, but I figured he was kind of an outlier."

"Well, he wasn't in SOLDIER long."

"Aren't you guys basically the same age?"

Sash shook her head. "Not exactly. I've got five years on him."

Yuffie hesitated. She'd never really given it that much thought before, just lumping Sash in with Zack in her mind, but... "Does that mean... you were in SOLDIER during the war?"

Sash didn't shy away from Yuffie's gaze or from the question. "Yes," she said, "I fought in the war. Is that going to be a problem?"

"I don't know," Yuffie admitted.

"It isn't for me."

"Well, I'd hope so, since you switched sides and you're fighting _against_ Shinra now."

"My reasons for that don't have much to do with Wutai. And from what I understand, Wutai isn't really in this fight. Just you."

Yuffie grimaced. "You just wait. You just think of me like the vanguard. Once the rest get in on it, the Shinra won't know what hit 'em."

"It seems like they'd better hurry up, if they want in on it," said Sash.

Yuffie's hands balled into fists at her side. Sash didn't have a problem, huh? Yuffie stalked to the room, shoved her feet into those damn Shinra boots because her sneakers were still somewhere in her pack, and turned on her heel.

"I can do this without _you_ , you know. Don't think you're anything special because you got here first."

Sash said nothing, and Yuffie shoved past her on her way out. She slammed the door behind her.

She didn't know where she was going, but she headed down to the street and started walking.

It wasn't that Sash was wrong. It just infuriated Yuffie to hear words out of Sash's mouth that her own-- that _Godo_ had thrown back at her before, even if they didn't carry nearly the same weight, coming from her. Wutai _wasn't_ in this fight, just her, on her own. And maybe AVALANCHE would put an end to Shinra before Yuffie could do enough to change that.

But Wutai _was_ changing. For years, it had happened only with the seasons. Oceans away, Yuffie still knew when each tree would lose the last of its leaves, and where the deepest snow drifts would form, and which parts of the river would freeze over. But this year, other things had come, too.

Houses that had stood empty since the war had been opened up, aired out, shored up for the winter, in anticipation of new occupants. After her party, the Highwind had left Kalm for Midgar, and the first group of refugees might have already made it to Wutai. Yuffie couldn't imagine how her people were receiving them, how they were adjusting, because it was something that had never happened before.

And when afternoon came, if the newcomers hadn't made things too hectic, old Gorkii would be in the square outside the pagoda, training his motley batch of students. Kids who hadn't had anyone around to teach them during the war, or who hadn't been old enough then to start learning. Adults who'd let their skills go forgotten in the years since.

They weren't in this fight, yet, but what else were they getting ready for?

Godo was the only one who didn't see it. Shut up in his big house, he was blind even to the changes that came every year. Wutai wasn't a living thing to him anymore. It hibernated. He didn't see, it was coming awake.

_Just wait_ , Yuffie thought again. In time, even he'd have to notice.

But she'd gone and left again, leaving Wutai behind. Too slow for her and her growing sense of urgency. Her friends had never pushed her to leave, but sometimes, sitting up on Da-chao, in the quiet, she'd felt the gods pushing her to action. There was a growing restlessness in the Planet itself, unlike the calm that had followed in the days after Holy.

Or maybe the restlessness was her own, and she was just imagining things.

Yuffie realized she was hungry, and she pushed her way into the first pub she came across. It wasn't crowded, and she took a seat at the bar, where she had a good view of the TV. Any news on would be exclusive to Junon, and that was why she was here, wasn't it? For news on Junon?

But it wasn't broadcasting anything important at this time of the afternoon. Just some fluff piece about how well Junon was welcoming its new residents from Midgar. While she waited on her food, the story broke for an advertisement, a bid for people to enlist in Shinra's military and help protect their city from the AVALANCHE threat.

Yuffie couldn't exactly say that they _weren't_ a threat. Maybe they didn't have another Holy up their sleeves, and Tifa was adamant about avoiding any further loss of life, but if they had their way, it meant an end to these people's way of life.

She wondered what the recruitment ads had said about Wutai, during the war. What kind of threat had _they_ posed, in the imaginations of the people who lived under Shinra? What had they thought they were protecting their families from?

How many of her people had Sash killed? Yuffie wondered finally. Did Yuffie walk past their graves, when she went to visit her mother's? Did she know their empty houses, about to be filled with Midgar refugees?

No one had warned her about Sash's role in the war, but maybe they'd thought it was obvious. Sash had been in SOLDIER. Yuffie knew that. She hadn't thought it through all the way, but she'd known it. To her, it hadn't been any different from Zack, or Cloud, or Vincent. They'd all done Shinra's dirty work, and she'd still come to trust her back to them.

Sash wasn't _supposed_ to be any different, but the war was so much more personal than anything that Zack or Cloud or Vincent might have been involved in. It wasn't just that Sash had fought against her people. It meant that, maybe, she'd been there for their defeat. For the moment of their greatest shame.

When they'd given up.

Soldiers in the square outside the pagoda. Soldiers she'd been too young and too powerless to fight, then.

Yuffie had left home the first time in search of power. She'd found it, unexpectedly, in her friends. In AVALANCHE.

That was what mattered now, right? Finally having the strength to stand up to the Shinra? Did it matter where it came from?

Yuffie didn't doubt Sash's commitment. She didn't worry the woman was going to stab her in the back. Zack had vouched for her, and Hojo had given her five years worth of personal reasons to hate the Shinra. If Sash still had some lingering prejudice or animosity towards Wutai... well, frankly it was mutual. They didn't have to like each other. They just had to get the job done.

Yuffie watched the reporter on the television talking like everything was getting back to normal, like what had happened in Midgar was no big deal. Junon was Rufus's stronghold, a bastion of safety.

But that's what everyone had thought about Midgar.

Junon had already made the mistake of letting Yuffie Kisaragi walk in through their front door, and they didn't even know it. It was only a matter of time.

Well, first things first, she'd finish her meal and get back to Sash. With any luck, the ex-SOLDIER would've worked her way to an apology by then, but Yuffie would be gracious enough to give her a chance even without one.

It wasn't how she'd imagined fighting the Shinra, but Yuffie wasn't a kid anymore. She was seventeen now, after all.

* * *

That night, she had that dream again.

The sounds of the city were all wrong. The faint but steady hum of electricity, the occasional flash of a car driving past, the intermittent sounds of people, echoing between too-tall buildings. Sash breathing softly in her bed. Completely absent was the gentle rush of water from the river that flowed past her house.

And so when she finally slept, she dreamt she stood on the bank of that river, but it was dry, not even a trickle through the stones of the riverbed. They lay dusty, and parched.

On the far shore stood her mother. Her lips were moving, but even though the air was still, there was a wind in Yuffie's ears, and she couldn't make out the words.

The colors around her grew drab. The stones in the riverbed turned black as ash and began to crumble, and it spread, reaching the banks. Yuffie ran for the bridge, dead grass snapping brittle under her feet, thinking this time, this time maybe she would make it.

The bridge had torn loose from the bank as it gave way beneath. Yuffie leapt. Her feet crashed into the wooden planks, and she sprinted on as they fell away beneath her.

She reached the other side and struggled to keep her footing over the crumbling earth. Everything turned to black ash--the ground, the buildings around her, even the tips of her fingers were grey. Colorless like the sky overhead.

She grabbed her mother's hands and couldn't feel them. "Mom!" she shouted. "What's going on?"

This time, Yuffie heard her speak.

"We're running out of--" she said, and then Yuffie woke.


	2. Chapter 2

At first glance, the Junon command center was not easily breached. Sash had cased it before Yuffie's arrival, and learned that Rufus had placed guards on its entrance who not only repeated ID checks, but insisted on doing them helmets-off. That made it a risky business for Yuffie to try entering head-on. Moreover, any time the top brass had an important meeting, they'd do a thorough sweep of the room and clear out all the lowly employees and infantrymen.

Yuffie might've called it paranoia, except that she was exactly the person they were trying to keep out.

Fortunately, there was no way a place where Junon's bigwigs regularly hung out would have only one exit. What if there was a fire? An assault that broke through into the base? Rufus needed another way out.

And that was why he had an emergency exit up to the roof. The only problem was, Reeve's schematics indicated it could only be unlocked from the inside. Which made this a two person job.

Sash's face wasn't known to the Shinra, not as part of AVALANCHE, so she had the inside job. Yuffie was waiting up top, crouched beside the emergency hatch.

Between the horizon and the edge of the roof, a tiny sliver of ocean was visible. That was the way she had come, scaling the walls of the base near that huge cannon. Her stolen Shinra uniform meant that no one had questioned her presence walking past the smaller batteries below, but she'd had to use a Sleep spell on a couple guys to create a blind spot for herself, because they definitely would've had questions about her upward climb.

The sun had set not long ago, the sky still afire with orange, and they were getting close to that five o'clock meeting they'd heard about from the base soldiers. Two long range Gelnika-types had just come back from some mystery mission, and Rufus was due to be briefed.

By now, could've already been in and out of the command center. Smack in the heart of Junon base would've been a bad time to find out Jessie's fake IDs didn't pass muster, so they'd tested them a few days earlier, at the harbor. No problems. And maybe the hatch was already unlocked. Yuffie wasn't sure if it was supposed to make a noise or not.

She checked her phone again. Nothing yet. The time read 4:55. They had to be finishing up their sweep by now. Soon.

Another minute ticked by, and then she felt it vibrate in her hand. _All clear._

Yuffie hauled the hatch open and dropped into the room below, trusting that it would be empty.

No one there. Yuffie had asked before why there was an escape hatch in an interrogation room (and why was there an interrogation room right off the command center anyway?), and Sash's best guess was that it had originally been designed as an office.

That explained the big, pretty windows. But Yuffie didn't have time to take in the view.

She closed the hatch behind her and then stepped through the door into the command center. She'd seen this room before, but never been inside of it. Rufus's big desk sat in front of the huge windows dominating the rear wall. One of the only decent views in Junon, and Rufus would sit with his back to it. What a waste.

They'd either gather for their briefing there, or near the big displays on the next wall. Yuffie chose a desk that wouldn't have line of sight to either and ducked beneath it, tucking herself into its deepest corner.

Not a moment too soon. The door whooshed open, and a group of people entered. Yuffie tried to differentiate between the footsteps--she couldn't have said which was Rufus but there were four... no, five distinct sets.

She held her breath as they strode past the far side of the desk, but there was no way they were in a position to see her. They continued on to the far end of the room, as expected. She wondered if any of them bothered to appreciate the view.

"Let's get right to it," said Rufus. "You said you had good news for me."

"Yes," answered a man whose voice Yuffie didn't recognize. "The preliminary survey of the site is looking excellent. We're measuring Mako outputs even higher than the initial estimates. You can see from the figures here..."

Yuffie didn't risk trying to get a look at whatever monitor he must've been pointing to, but she decided he must've been some kind of scientist. Hojo's replacement? Probably not up to snuff, considering Rufus had nearly given Lucrecia run of the department despite suspecting she had ties to AVALANCHE.

Lucrecia... Yuffie wondered how Vincent was dealing. Was it even possible for him to get any more depressing?

"Incredible," Rufus was saying of the data displayed.

"Indeed," said the scientist. "There's even been some concern that the output could overwhelm our reactors as they're currently designed."

"I trust your departments can work together to make the necessary modifications."

"Of course," said a woman. What department did _she_ represent? Rufus had lost all his previous lot to Holy, one way or another, and AVALANCHE had yet to figure out the new command structure. "It's almost the opposite of a problem," the woman went on. "The pumps will have to do _less_ work, since the Mako will come out so easily."

"Exactly," the scientist agreed. "The only thing that might actually pose a problem is the terrain."

"What about the terrain?" said Rufus.

"We've located some sort of cave system running beneath the center of the crater."

Yuffie's breath stilled. The crater? Were they talking about the Northern Crater? She thought of the Lifestream gushing forth there, massive amounts of energy, energy that had come together and manifested Leviathan.

Energy that was nothing but more Mako to the Shinra.

"We have yet to determine how extensive it is," the scientist was saying. "We may be able to fill it in, or even make use of it. My worst case scenario is that the crater's center won't be able to support any significant construction, but I doubt we'll be forced to abandon the site entirely."

"I see," said Rufus. "How long do you anticipate a survey of these caves will take?"

"I'm not sure yet. The way down from the entrance we found is treacherous; we're having to be careful, and we haven't explored far yet."

"That doesn't answer my question. I want an estimate by the end of the week. We can't begin laying out the city until we know the crater will support it."

"Yes, sir."

"It's a shame we lost most of Director Tuesti's department," remarked the woman.

"We still have the plans he drew up for Neo Midgar," Rufus said coldly, "so we're past needing his skills as an architect. Reeve's people were dead weight. What we need now are engineers, and there are none better than Junon's."

"I suppose a few caves are nothing compared to building the undersea reactor..." she conceded.

"Exactly." There was a short pause. "Moving on. Talk to me about the Huge Materia."

Yuffie perked up. What the hell was Huge Materia?

"The data we have from our Mako Cannon puts the power output of a single Huge Materia at 330 times that of normal materia," the woman answered. "It's untested in any other capacity, but it should be enough to rival the destructive power we saw from Holy."

"And can you adapt what we've learned from the cannon for use in something more mobile?"

A weapon, Yuffie thought. And if he wanted something mobile, then he was after a weapon he could use against AVALANCHE. Something as powerful as Holy? It'd be Sector 7 all over again, swaths of collateral damage just to get to them.

That was sobering. She wanted to be excited about a whole new kind of materia, but that made it hard.

"We're working on designs for a Huge-Materia-powered bomb," said the woman. Maybe she'd taken over for Scarlet--the new head of Weapons Development? "We expect to begin constructing the prototype by next week, but eventually we're going to need some Huge Materia to work with. I don't think you want to use Junon's."

"No," Rufus confirmed. "I'm not disarming the cannon. Where do we get more?"

"The East Junon, Corel, and Nibel reactors were all designed to produce it. So was the Gongaga reactor, but Scarlet inspected it herself this summer; the malfunction meant it never operated long enough to produce anything that powerful."

"And AVALANCHE destroyed the Nibel reactor weeks ago..." That voice was Elena's, and Yuffie grimaced. Elena had lent Reeve a hand in the immediate aftermath of Holy, but she'd split for Junon the second she heard Rufus and Tseng had survived. Like she couldn't lick their boots fast enough.

Yuffie wasn't surprised they'd heard about the Nibel reactor, but she wondered exactly who they'd heard it _from_. One of their employees masquerading as harmless villagers in Nibelheim? Or maybe somebody from Rocket Town? They all would've noticed when the power went out.

"That's true," said the weapons expert. "It's possible they destroyed the materia with it. At the very least, the rubble will make it difficult to reach."

"The East Junon reactor will likely give us trouble, too," said Tseng, finally putting a voice to all five people present. "Patrols say it's still occupied by insurgents."

"What were they calling it again?" Rufus asked.

"Fort Condor."

"We have the manpower to take it, don't we?"

"Of course," said Tseng. "It was simply never a priority before now."

"I want you to prepare for it then. And put a team together to retrieve the materia from the Corel reactor."

"Yes, sir. And the Nibel reactor?"

A short pause. "We can send people to Mt. Nibel later if we need to," Rufus decided. "AVALANCHE has already done what they meant to there; they won't be back to get in our way."

"Understood."

"Well then," said Rufus. "You all have your orders. Get to it."

"Yes, sir," the others all said in unison.

Footsteps again, tracing the path across the room to the door--but only four. Had Rufus stayed behind? Yuffie cursed internally. She had to get the hell out of here and call Tifa, but if she came out of her hiding place now, he'd see her for sure.

The meeting was over. Other people would be returning to the command center any minute, and people were a lot better about looking _down_.

Yuffie fingered her Seal materia, thinking. Sleep spells didn't usually work on people like Rufus, and even if she could Silence him, it would only delay him from raising an alarm. She might make it back out the hatch before anyone could catch her, but the harbor would be on high alert for her.

Damn it, he wasn't supposed to have _stayed_.

The door opened again, allowing a single person entrance. Yuffie tensed as footsteps approached her hiding place...

No, it was all right. She'd heard those same footfalls pacing the floors of the apartment the past few nights.

A uniformed soldier pulled back the chair in front of her and sat down. Yuffie made out a familiar face beneath the helmet. Sash glanced down at her and gave a slight nod.

_Stay put for now._

Someone else came in for a little while and left again. Finally Rufus moved away from his desk and crossed the room. The door swished shut behind him.

"You're clear to come out," said Sash. "Take the desk to my left. The soldiers at the door don't have line-of-sight to that computer."

Yuffie was out from under the desk before she'd finished speaking, and darted across the aisle to the other desk, sliding into the chair and wheeling it back behind the computer monitor.

"We'll wait until it fills up again," Sash went on, "then head out."

Yuffie hated the wait. This was exactly the kind of information they'd been hoping to learn, but after all this time, why did Shinra have to be moving so quickly _now_?

Well, really, they'd been moving all along, she guessed, but out of sight. Yuffie had forgotten they'd see any value in the Northern Crater; it was the place where they'd defeated Sephiroth, and with him gone, she'd thought of it as empty. Just a big crater. How long had Rufus been established in Junon before he'd sent a team back there? When had he decided he just wanted to build a whole new Midgar?

In the four days that she'd spent in Junon, Yuffie had watched a lot of news. Shinra pundits analyzing footage captured of Holy, talking about how it debunked Reeve's claims about a fatal flaw in Midgar's reactors. Of course Rufus knew what had really happened--Aeris and Tifa had tried to warn him--but he hadn't shared that with the press. Instead Shinra had cultivated the idea that Reeve had been collaborating with AVALANCHE, that they'd turned some new weapon on Midgar.

Was that what they were planning to say after they used their new bomb? That it was AVALANCHE, yet again? It sounded transparent and tired to Yuffie, but the people of Junon seemed to buy it. There was no dissent among the TV hosts or their viewers, just different theories on what AVALANCHE's next move would be. Get rid of Midgar, get rid of AVALANCHE, and Shinra's would be the only story there was.

Yuffie stared blankly at the computer screen in front of her, and pretended to be working. There was probably more intel to be dug out of its systems, but she wasn't Jessie. Hell, she didn't even know how to type.

Thankfully, she'd observed plenty of real soldiers having trouble with that, so none of them batted an eye at her hunting-and-pecking over the keys.

At last enough people had gone in and out to disguise the fact that the command center had picked up one extra. Yuffie got up from the desk, and Sash stood, too, and they strode out through the door. They passed the gaudy statue of the late President Shinra, and didn't speak until they had made their way safely through the rest of the halls and out of the base.

"You got something big?" Sash asked her as Yuffie picked up the pace.

"Yeah," she said. "We really gotta tell the others."

But not in the middle of the street. Yuffie hurried along the sidewalk, passing through the glow of street lamps and the shadows in between, as quickly as she thought she could move without drawing undue attention. Closer to the apartment, the street lamps grew farther apart, and the light from the lobby spilled out through the glass door into a stretch of darkness. Yuffie pushed her way inside.

Within the safety of the apartment, Sash locked the door behind them, and Yuffie threw off her helmet. She flung her cell phone from her pocket onto the kitchen table and dialed Tifa without hesitation.

"Yuffie?" Tifa answered after a couple rings. "How did it go?"

"The good news is I've got a lot of intel for you," said Yuffie. "The bad news is we gotta move fast."

"What's going on? What are they up to?"

"Is everyone there?"

"I'll go grab Barret," said Jessie.

"Good," said Yuffie. "'cause Corel's involved, too."

"Corel..." Tifa murmured, and Yuffie could just imagine her brow wrinkling with worry. Even after they'd gone and saved the world from Sephiroth, she was still a worrier.

There was a minute of relative silence, and then came the heavy thud of Barret's footfalls. "Awright, I'm here. What's up?"

"The Shinra are going after something called Huge Materia," Yuffie explained. "It's s'posed to be over 300 times stronger than regular materia. They make this stuff in their reactors, too, and they've been using the one in Junon to power that big cannon."

"Does that mean they're finally headed back to Midgar for it?" Jessie wondered.

"No. Doesn't sound like the Midgar reactors were set up to make it. They're going after Corel and Fort Condor first."

"Corel!?" Barret exclaimed.

"Yeah," said Yuffie. "I mean, I don't think the town's in any danger, but..."

"They mess with the reactor and it could be," said Barret. "I ain't takin' any chances on it."

"I know."

"What are they planning to _do_ with the Huge Materia?" Aeris broke in.

"They were talking about building a bomb," said Yuffie. "Something that'd rival Holy. They didn't say anything about a target, but I've got two guesses as to who they'd wanna use it on."

"AVALANCHE," said Tifa, "or Reeve..."

"I'm not even sure they know we're here," said Jessie, "so... that most likely means Midgar. It'd be Sector 7 all over again..."

There was a short silence. Yuffie hadn't been there for Sector 7 like they had, but she'd seen the wreckage. As a single blow, it was worse than anything the Shinra had done to Wutai. And they'd done it to their own people, and they didn't even regret it, or they wouldn't be plotting to do it all over again.

"Well, we ain't gonna let that happen," Barret said at last, a hard determination to his voice. "We ain't gonna let them get their hands on the stuff."

"Is this really what they've been up to all this time?" Tifa wondered. "Just looking for a way to destroy us? To wipe us out completely...?"

Yuffie shook her head. "No, I don't think so. At least that's not all of it. They've had this team up investigating the Northern Crater."

"What?" said Aeris.

"So that's where the Gelnikas went," said Sash.

"Yeah," Yuffie confirmed, glancing up at her. "They wanna build a whole new Midgar there."

"So their survey team just reported back, and now they're after a weapon to wipe us out..." said Jessie, in that slow way she had while she was putting something important together. "I get it. _That_ 's what they've been waiting on, isn't it? They couldn't make any decisions on the old Midgar, until they knew whether they could have their shiny new one."

Maybe they should've known to expect it, but the idea that the Shinra would abandon Midgar had never crossed Yuffie's mind. All of them had figured that once Rufus had gotten back on his feet in Junon, he'd be gunning to retake the city. They'd been braced for the first signs of it for a while now. Midgar had always been Shinra's pride and glory, the crowning jewel of their empire.

"I can't believe they're throwing away an entire city," said Tifa. "I mean, I _can_ , but..."

"It's not actually a new plan," said Aeris. "Neo Midgar was the dream of Rufus's father. It's why Shinra was interested in the Cetra. It's why they followed Sephiroth. They wanted to find the Promised Land, so they could build it there... The Northern Crater isn't the Promised Land, but it's what Shinra imagined it to be. The Planet is still concentrating so much of its energy there..."

"And I'm sure they figure," said Jessie, "that by now every citizen that matters has already found their way to Junon. Every citizen loyal to Shinra."

"There aren't too many refugees showing up anymore," Sash put in, as if to say they were more or less right about that.

"Fuck that," said Barret. "They got all the folks who could _afford_ the trip; loyalty don't factor into it beyond that. The ones left behind need our protection, so let's talk about how we do that. We got a timeline for when they're headed out?"

"Not exactly," Yuffie admitted. "But Rufus put Tseng on it, and I don't think he's gonna waste any time."

"They've grounded the Gelnikas for servicing, though," said Sash. "They'll be out of commission for at least a few days."

"Do they only have the two?" Aeris wondered.

"They've got three, as far as we know," said Jessie, "but I'm betting the third one's still up at the crater with the rest of the survey team, so as not to leave 'em stranded if something happens."

Yuffie nodded. "That gives us the speed advantage then, right?"

"If they can't go by air, we'll beat them to Corel for sure," Jessie reasoned. "But Fort Condor... That's only a day's drive from Junon, and the Highwind's in Wutai right now."

"We might not make it," Tifa conceded, "but we can warn them. Hopefully they can hold off the Shinra until we get there with back-up."

"Yeah," said Barret. "We get our people to Fort Condor first, then we head for Corel."

"Wait," said Aeris. "What if they already have people at Corel? It's not like the Nibel reactor; the one at Corel is manned. I remember that from the tour."

"Shit, you're right," said Jessie. "If they've already got personnel out there, they wouldn't have to send anybody from Junon. They just have to transport it back."

"It'll have to go through Costa del Sol either way," said Sash. "Hang on. I've got the shipping schedules." She got up from the table, moving to the farther end to search through a stack of papers.

Yuffie watched her rifle through them, something nagging at her that she couldn't quite put her finger on. They were rushing to get to these reactors ahead of the Shinra, which made it feel like the Shinra were rushing, too, but they wouldn't be feeling the same pressure. Not yet.

"Guys, I just thought of something else," she said. "They were saying the Nibel reactor should've had some, too, but since you guys blew it up, they didn't wanna bother with it right now. They think they've got plenty of time to go back for it, but once they realize we know what they're up to..."

"Then they'll hit that reactor, too," Tifa finished.

"You don't have to go back there, Tifa," Aeris said gently.

"Yeah," Barret agreed. "Jess an' I can hit it after we take care of Corel."

"Right..."

"Here we are," said Sash, moving back to the phone. "There's a ship headed out of Costa del Sol tomorrow morning, but that'll be too soon for them. Looks like... the next one on that route is the one that was supposed to leave Junon harbor this afternoon. Shinra delayed it."

Yuffie exchanged glances with her. "You think... they knew they might be sending people west?"

"Maybe."

Yuffie did some quick math in her head, trying to figure out when Barret would make it to Corel, versus when that cargo ship would reach the western continent.

"If it hasn't left yet, then I'm getting on that ship," she decided, and the words out of her own mouth made her grimace. Gods, she hoped that ugly wristband Cloud had given her for her birthday really did help with seasickness.

"Yuffie," said Tifa, "you've done plenty already getting us the intel. You don't have to put yourself through that."

"I wanna help. Think of it like a fail-safe. If something happens, and the Shinra get the Huge Materia outta Corel before we do, we've _gotta_ snatch it from 'em before they get it to Junon, because once it's here, they're gonna lock that thing down."

"Are you sure this isn't just you wanting in on a mission involving materia?" Jessie asked.

How had she managed to forget it was materia they were dealing with? There actually _was_ something to look forward to in what she'd just volunteered herself for. She'd been focusing so much on the potential bomb aspect of it, but how would it feel to hold a piece of the most powerful materia in the world in her hands?

Hopefully nothing like the Black Materia.

"Only a little bit," she said. "Like ten percent?"

"Ten?" Jessie repeated dubiously.

" _Maybe_ twenty," she amended, "but what's wrong with that? The Shinra wanna blow stuff up with it, but we haven't even thought about what _we_ might be able to do with it."

"AVALANCHE's past its bombin' days, Yuffie," said Barret.

"I know that. But maybe it's got some other use besides."

"She's got a point," Aeris put in. "Maybe all the Shinra made was a weapon... but it wouldn't be the first time they didn't fully understand what they created. There could be a power there that doesn't just lend itself to destruction."

"Well, I guess we'll find out," said Tifa, "because I plan on us winding up with it."

"Guess it wouldn't be a bad thing to have some insurance," said Barret. "We _can't_ let 'em make that bomb."

"All right, Yuffie," Tifa decided. "You go if you can. And if that's everything, we should probably let you go. We've got some calls to make."

"I'll get back to you if there's anything I forgot, but yeah. I gotta get goin'."

"Right. Thanks, you two. Stay safe."

"Yeah, yeah. You, too."

Yuffie ended the call, made sure the phone was still on silent, and shoved it back into the pocket of her Shinra uniform.

"Man... Guess I'm not gettin' outta this thing any time soon."

"I could go instead," Sash offered, but Yuffie shook her head.

"Nah. I've done this bit before, and my gut's telling me I gotta be involved in this somehow."

"All right," said Sash, "but I'll go with you to the harbor. Just in case you need a hand."

Yuffie nodded, reached for her helmet, and then hesitated. She caught Sash's eye. "Thanks for your help, before."

"Just doing my job," said Sash, though Yuffie thought she detected a hint of satisfaction. "Maybe I never pictured myself on the same team as some teenager from Wutai, but we _are_ on the same team. That means I've got your back."

"Yeah..." Yuffie eyed her cautiously. "Weird, huh?"

"I've... been through weirder," Sash pointed out. "Missing five years was a trip. Especially finding out my commanding officer was actually an alien? Who wanted to destroy the world."

"When you put it that way..." Yuffie considered. "Anyway, we better get moving."

Sash nodded in agreement. Her face disappeared behind her helmet, and the two of them left the apartment again together, moving through the night towards the harbor.

Lights glinted on the water between the ships at dock, and Yuffie knew. There was something more to all of this than what the Shinra saw. She just didn't know exactly _what_ yet.


	3. Chapter 3

"So what did Barret have to say?"

Zack turned with Wedge as Elmyra joined them from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishrag. The power had gone out for the night a short while ago, leaving her to finish cooking with the residual heat of the stove.

"Looks like Shinra's finally on the move," Zack told her.

Elmyra looked between the two of them. "Are you going somewhere then?"

"Not quite yet," Wedge assured her. "We've gotta wait for the Highwind to get back from Wutai. So we're not skipping out on dinner, I promise."

"Speaking of which, Cloud should've been back by now," said Zack, looking to the door. The yard outside was dark even to his Mako eyes, but not impenetrable. Not a Cloud in sight. "I'm gonna go track 'im down. Be back soon, Mrs. G, but don't worry about waiting for us."

"All right."

Trusting that Wedge would fill Elmyra in on the details, Zack put the mission out of mind and stepped out onto the garden path. Aeris's garden, though between her absence and the coming winter, only a handful of plants still had blooms. Elmyra and some of the other people in Sector 5 knew how to care for them, but Zack wasn't sure how long they'd really last in the diminished light, and without Aeris.

It was weird, living here with her mom, but not her. Zack didn't think he'd ever quite get over _how_ weird. The times he'd been here before, he'd always been some kind of intruder--either facing Elmyra's critical gaze across the dinner table, or letting Aeris sneak him up to her room so they could make out.

Now he was sleeping in that room. With his boyfriend. Not the ideal arrangement, but there really weren't any ideal arrangements to be had in Midgar these days.

These daily brownouts were a part of it. What had once been a world of perpetual night was now a world of night and deeper night. Instead of a jumble of street lamps and spotlights illuminating his way through the sector, now there was only the dim glow of candlelight out of windows and the gaps in corrugated metal.

And a lot of darkness between. The slums were emptier than they used to be.

Cloud was supposed to have been helping out at the church, organizing things for the next group of refugees headed to Wutai. That was a path Zack knew pretty well. Apart from the lighting, the landscape of Sector 5 hadn't changed much in the past five years.

Stuff like that still threw him--how some things had changed so much, while other things were almost like he remembered. He'd spent five years imagining coming back here for Aeris, but she'd moved on. And when he'd found his freedom, she wasn't the one he'd gone looking for.

_There_ he was. That familiar mess of blond hair squatting to peer into a gap between shanties.

"Hey, buddy," Zack greeted. "What's up?"

"Lost cat," said Cloud, with the kind of brevity that said he was getting frustrated. He stayed put a moment longer, frowned, and then pushed himself to his feet. He nodded down the street. "This kid's out in the dark and won't tell me where he lives until we find it."

"Hmm. You kinda feel like that's a job for Wedge, if only he could see in the dark."

"Are you gonna help me look for the damn cat or not?"

Zack fought back a laugh. "Yeah, 'course I will. What's it look like?"

"Tabby. White paws."

"Her name is Mittens!" the little boy called out helpfully from somewhere just out of sight. Cloud had probably told him to stay put there, so he wouldn't get lost, too.

"Got it," Zack called back. He gave Cloud's hair a quick ruffle, unable to resist, and then turned away to search the other side of the street. He could feel Cloud's disgruntled look against his back. "So Barret called," Zack went on.

"I take it he wasn't inviting us to a birthday party this time," said Cloud.

"Sadly, no. Sounds like Fort Condor's headed for a showdown. We're gonna be headed there with some of Reeve's men as soon as the Highwind can pick us up. Tomorrow night, maybe."

"It's been a while," Cloud remarked, "since we did any real fighting."

"I don't figure we'll be too rusty," Zack reasoned. They'd gone nearly five years without doing a damn thing, after all, and everything had still come pretty natural. Things shouldn't have been any different after a couple months.

"I'm not really worried about that," said Cloud.

"Then what? You just been enjoying the quiet life? Finding lost kitty-cats?"

"If we could _find_ it," Cloud muttered under his breath. "But... maybe. In a way. It's just been... nice, not having to worry about anyone."

Zack glanced over at him, but Cloud wasn't looking in his direction. "You're sweet," he said, "but I'll remind you I came out of our fight with Sephiroth in better shape than any of you."

"And I got fresh burn scars, I know," said Cloud. It wasn't the first time it had come up; Zack had made such a poor account of himself back in Nibelheim that he really felt he had to brag about the rematch sometimes, for the sake of his ego. "I can still worry a little. You're always trying to be the hero."

"Trying? I think we could both come out of this one looking pretty heroic. Fighting off the Shinra to save some nice townsfolk, not to mention the local wildlife... Hey, maybe there _will_ be a party."

Cloud threw him a skeptical look. "In your honor?"

"In _our_ honor," Zack corrected, and then he spotted the glint of eyes staring back at him from beneath the front steps of a shop. "That you, Mittens? Here, kitty kitty..."

He reached for her, but she hissed and took a swipe at him, her claws catching his wrist.

"Ow!" he exclaimed, yanking his arm back.

"Yeah, you're _real_ tough," said Cloud. "I'm gonna get the kid."

The little boy managed to coax Mittens out from under the steps without further violence, and scooped her up into his arms. His beloved pet recovered, he let them escort him back to his house a few blocks away, where his father thanked them profusely. They bid him good night and turned back towards Elmyra's house.

"I'm definitely more of a dog person," Zack decided, inspecting the scratches. They weren't deep, but he anticipated itching.

"Want me to kiss it better?" said Cloud.

"I know you're being sarcastic, but I'm not turning down the offer."

Zack didn't have to look to know Cloud was rolling his eyes, but he still took Zack's wrist when it was offered and pressed a kiss to it.

"Thanks. I feel better already."

He dropped his arm and reached instead for Cloud's hand, twining their fingers together. Cloud wasn't big on the public displays of affection, but there was no one around to see, and they literally couldn't have seen had they been there. It was one little upside to the otherwise depressing darkness.

"So," Cloud said, "Shinra's attacked Fort Condor before, right? What makes this time different?"

So Zack told him the rest of it, what Barret had told him about the Huge Materia, and their speculations on what Shinra meant to do with it. Not the most romantic conversation.

Cloud was quiet at first, and then he said, "I can't believe we used to work for them."

"You and me both, man. Kinda makes you wonder about the guys in Junon. Are they still clueless or are they really that committed to the job?"

"Probably a mix of both," Cloud reasoned. "I mean... Some of them must see Junon as home, and they wanna defend it, right?"

"Too bad we can't explain to them that we're the _good_ guys."

" _We_ thought we were the good guys, before."

"Ah, yes. When we were young and stupid, and Sephiroth was..." Zack trailed off. "Well, he was a halfway decent guy, once."

"Only halfway," said Cloud, unsurprisingly. It was easier for him to unequivocally condemn the man, when he hadn't known him very well. Zack just made a hard distinction between the Sephiroth Before, and the Sephiroth After. As far as he was concerned, they were two completely different people.

He didn't have any regrets about his part in killing the Sephiroth After, but every now and then... Every now and then, he felt a little sad about the Sephiroth Before. The first real casualty of that day in Nibelheim. But Cloud, and frankly most of AVALANCHE, were _not_ the right audience for that.

Maybe Vincent, if he ever saw the guy again.

Wedge and Elmyra were talking over the dinner table as Zack and Cloud stepped inside, but they broke off their conversation to look up.

"Everything all right?" Elmyra asked.

"Yeah," Zack answered, taking the seat across from her. "Just had to track down a lost pet."

"Mittens again?" asked Wedge, and it shouldn't have surprised him; Wedge knew all the neighborhood cats.

"That's the one," Zack confirmed.

"She's always wandering off. Not like our Miss Evie here." Wedge reached down to pet the black cat who, predictably, was hanging around under the table in expectation of dinner scraps. It had required some persuasion, but Elmyra had at last agreed to the adoption of exactly one (1) cat.

Zack didn't mind Evie. She was a lot friendlier than Mittens. The only problem was she effectively disappeared when her eyes were closed, and they'd all tripped over her more than once.

"So Zack got you up to speed, right?" Wedge asked Cloud.

"Yeah," said Cloud. "Guess that means this next group isn't headed for Wutai just yet."

"I guess not," said Wedge. "I'm sure they can be patient, but with everything going on, I hate to put getting them someplace safer on hold."

"They'll be fine," said Zack. "Shinra's not getting that Huge Materia. Simple as that."

Cloud glanced at him. They both knew things were never as simple as that, but Zack preferred to give voice to optimism. Someone had to try to balance out all the pessimists.

It was Zack's turn to do the dishes that night, which he managed to remember without anyone reminding him. This time he hoped he'd gotten them clean enough for Elmyra's standards; by candlelight, it was hard to tell.

At the table behind him, Elmyra switched on the radio, adjusting it to pick up the one available station. The usual news broadcast was on. Reeve continued to be worlds more transparent about his activities than Shinra, and passed along updates on relocation and reconstruction efforts. They hoped to have Sector 8 completely evacuated within the week, which would let Reeve reroute more power to the other sectors, and maybe their 'daytime' would last a little longer.

Technically, Zack guessed he might take the opportunity to lower the power output even further, but he doubted it. Plenty of people were already angry with him over the state of Midgar, and they weren't entirely wrong to blame him. Midgar wasn't just down four reactors; Reeve had made a compromise with AVALANCHE to keep the reactors running at the minimal output necessary to keep the city going. They had their night cycles, the trains ran infrequently, and about the only places with steady power were the hospitals.

At Jessie's suggestion, Reeve lived with it like anyone else, which helped some. Anyone who visited the new headquarters in Sector 3 would find Reeve's people working by candlelight late into the evenings. In theory it was all temporary, and what pissed Zack off when he'd learned about it was that Shinra had already _done_ research into alternative power sources. Mako had just turned out to be easier and cheaper to produce, and therefore more profitable.

Now, while Shinra was working on new weapons, Reeve's faction was building prototypes based on abandoned research. One day, he hoped to return Midgar to its former glory. Or, a new glory, as the case may be, under something that wasn't Shinra anymore.

They desperately needed a new name, but no one could convince Reeve to make it a priority. And as much as Zack had come to respect the guy over the past month, 'Tuesti' just didn't have the same ring to it as Shinra.

When he'd finished in the kitchen, Zack left Wedge and Elmyra to go on listening, and stepped outside. Cloud was waiting for him in the garden, sitting among the trimmed stems of a bed of lilies, listening to the stillness of the deep night.

Zack joined him, sitting down close enough so their shoulders brushed, and glanced up in the direction of the plate overhead. He couldn't really see it, except as a stretch of black overhead, but he could make out its distant edges silhouetted above the faint green haze at the horizon.

"Y'know," he said, "I think it'll be nice to get outta here for a few days. Get an actual view at night."

"We're not leaving to go stargazing," said Cloud.

"I know, I know. But once we win, I'm gonna spend the rest of the day just drinking in the sky."

"What if it rains?"

Zack shot him a look. "I swear, sometimes you just enjoy being contrary."

He just barely caught Cloud's smirk in the dim. "Maybe."

"If it rains, I'm going out anyway. Even if it is almost December."

"You'll catch a cold."

Zack slung an arm around him, pulling him closer. It was plenty chilly out here, too. "Not if you come along to keep me warm," he said.

"That's basically my job, I guess."

"My very own portable heater."

"And here I thought you liked me for my personality."

"Hmm... Guess not. You do make the most _adorable_ heater though."

Cloud elbowed him in the side, but Zack leaned in undeterred and kissed him on the forehead.

"You know I like every part of you," he said softly.

He couldn't see Cloud's face well enough to be sure, but Zack had watched it turn red plenty of times before, and he knew the embarrassed silence that followed. Cloud leaned into him, and Zack waited patiently for him to speak up.

"Maybe we get a room to ourselves on the Highwind," he proposed at last.

Zack just couldn't help himself. "Looking to join the mile high club?" he asked.

"Uhh... I've never heard of that, but I think I can guess, and... probably not."

"I'll take a maybe," said Zack.

Making out in his ex-girlfriend's bedroom was... awkward, to say the least. He knew Cloud wasn't wild about it. Plus they shared the room with Wedge, seeing as none of them dared even propose intruding on Elmyra's privacy, and while Wedge was very good about knocking... Cloud was always too embarrassed to continue after they'd been interrupted.

Zack longed for someplace private enough to put him at ease, but Cloud was right, it probably wouldn't be the Highwind.

Probably.

Probably wasn't definitely.

"You're still thinking about it, aren't you?" said Cloud.

"Don't put this all on me. You're the one who brought it up."

"Well, I-- ... I just..."

"You want me. I get it. I'm super hot."

Cloud gave him a shove, and Zack happily let it push him over, tugging Cloud with him.

Thankfully, Cloud took the invitation, done with being contrary. Zack was glad, because the last thing he wanted to do tonight was have the time to think about the mission.

Something about it definitely wasn't simple, but he didn't want to think it through just yet.

* * *

The Highwind didn't return to Midgar the following day, but early the day after. Zack, Cloud, and Wedge took the morning train up to Sector 3 topside and made their way to the new headquarters. The airship waited overhead, propellers spinning. Most of Reeve's men must have already boarded, but a familiar shock of red hair waited for them on the ground.

"All right," said Reno. "Let's get a move on."

If anyone had asked him, Zack would have bet money he didn't have on Reno and Rude making a beeline back to Rufus along with Elena, but he doubted anyone would have taken him up on it. Those two staying had surprised everyone.

The story from Reeve was that Rufus had ordered them to arrest him, but they'd used that to bargain for a higher salary instead. Zack was skeptical. Midgar was enough of a mess that most people had reverted to the barter system, and there were no guarantees they'd ever get back to a point where gil was worth anything.

If Reno and Rude really _were_ loyal to their side, it was more likely they'd seen Shinra for a sinking ship and decided to step off. But Zack wasn't convinced they'd even come that far.

" _You_ 're coming along?" he asked Reno quizzically.

"Your boss had a chat with my boss," Reno explained. "She wants that 'Fort Condor' reactor shut down, and you need somebody along who knows how to do that safely."

"I know my way around a reactor," said Zack.

Reno spread his hands. "The fact that you blew up the last one you were in doesn't inspire confidence. Besides, I know how to get to the Huge Materia. That's a company secret we never shared with SOLDIER."

Zack shrugged. "Fine. Welcome aboard."

"After you," said Reno, gesturing to the ladder up to the Highwind.

Zack exchanged glances with Cloud, but he went on ahead without protest. They'd have to keep an eye on him. That was all.

Once they were all on board, the four of them went ahead to the bridge to let Cid know they were ready to take off. Barret and Jessie were there, too, and Jessie called out a greeting.

"Hey, guys!" She gave Wedge a hug and then pulled back to add, "Long time no see."

Zack laughed. "Yeah, it's been what, a week? But I'm not complaining."

"Just here to share the ride, though," said Barret.

"I know. You sure you're okay to take on Corel with just the three of you?"

Barret exchanged glances with Jessie and Wedge. "Sure," he said. "Be just like old times."

The moment he said it, a shadow flitted across all three of their faces, and Zack remembered their missing number, Biggs, who'd lost his life in Sector 7 before Zack had met any of them.

"So I guess Tifa and Aeris are holding down the fort?" Wedge said quickly.

"That's right," Barret confirmed. "Tifa's tryin' to hold onto that job o' hers, and Aeris's lookin' after Marlene for us."

"You do wonder if that's _all_ they're gonna get up to," Jessie put in.

"Some of us prefer not to wonder," said Barret, throwing her a look.

"Hmm..." Zack wasn't sure he was in Barret's camp there. Tifa had always been off-limits, sure, but there was no denying she was hot, and _Aeris_...

Cloud's elbow rudely interrupted his train of thought, and Zack had to fight hard not to bring up a certain someone's past fantasies involving Tifa. That old crush was _not_ common knowledge.

"I'm sure it'll be very wholesome," Zack offered instead.

Jessie mouthed a 'sorry' to him that didn't look especially sincere with that look of amusement on her face, and Wedge cleared his throat.

"So have you talked to Shera yet?" he asked Barret. "Did she have any update on how our volunteers are settling in Wutai?"

"Ahh, yeah, we talked about it last night..."

As Barret went on to relate what he'd learned from Shera, Zack shifted his gaze to watch the view out the huge front window. The ship had turned south, putting Midgar behind them, and the mountains separating them from Junon approached.

It sounded like things were going well in Wutai. Yuffie would've hated anyone but her saying so, but the people of Wutai had grown used to accommodating the Shinra, and so far, they accommodated the refugees just as easily. For their part, the refugees were people who'd been eager to leave the chaos of Midgar behind. Hell, some of them had even had a grandparent or two from Wutai, so they'd started telling themselves it would be like a homecoming. Even if it was a place they'd never been before.

Wedge went on asking questions, and Zack turned his attention to Cloud beside him. He was listening intently enough, but he seemed a little on edge.

"You doin' okay?" Zack asked him softly. "Wanna walk around some?"

"I'm okay," said Cloud. He glanced around at the people on the bridge--Barret and Jessie and Wedge, Cid and his crew, Reno--and added, "But I wouldn't mind a walk."

Zack knew that look. It was going to be a little tougher over the next few days for Cloud to get in his daily quota of introvert time, and he was already looking for ways to grab it when he could. Zack turned for the exit, but flashed Cloud a playful wink.

"I gotcha," he said, and leaned in conspiratorially. "Gotta see if we can find that room."

Cloud's ears turned red, and he walked on out of the bridge without mustering a reply. Zack followed, grinning to himself.

He let up on the teasing the rest of the trip, knowing Cloud's motion sickness could make him touchier than usual. Instead he chatted about anything that came to mind, anything but the mission. Would Aeris's flowers come back in the spring? How long before Tifa owned that bar she was working at? Wasn't Barret's new arm cool, and why did Cloud have to veto every tattoo idea Zack came up with?

Zack rubbed absently at his hand, thinking of the tattoo beneath the glove. Between the number and his scars, there were a lot of marks on his body he hadn't exactly signed up for. He thought it would feel good to choose one for himself, but Cloud was such a critic, and he really wanted his boyfriend to think it was cool.

"All right, then you come up with something," he decided at last.

"What?"

"I'm gonna tattoo _something_ on my body, and I'm giving you a month to think of something cool or I'm going with whatever I feel like that day."

"So... you're letting me pick?"

"It has to be good," Zack insisted. "I'm not gonna tattoo a literal cloud on my butt just because you think it's funny."

"That sounds more like something you'd come up with," said Cloud, though he was definitely smirking, "and I already told you you can't get a tattoo of me."

"I was joking with that one."

"Right, and that's why you were doodling my name in different fonts."

" _That_ 's because I was thinking about our names. You know, if we got married? I mean, would you be Cloud Fair or would I be Zack Strife?"

"...they both sound weird."

"You think so?"

"Also we're not engaged," Cloud added.

"Fair point. Nothing wrong with thinking ahead, though."

"You could probably stand to do that more often."

Zack shot him a look. "You know, I told myself I was gonna go easy on you while we were in the air, and I feel like you're really taking advantage."

"Who told you to go easy?"

"Ahh, c'mere."

They came in sight of Fort Condor in the afternoon, and rejoined the others on the bridge. Ahead, the lone reactor perched atop a rocky hillside, with its own small ring of barren earth stretching out around it. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as the Midgar wasteland, but no trees grew for miles, and the grass was brown, as if it hadn't seen any season but winter in years.

At least it made it easy to tell that the Shinra hadn't arrived yet. For now, the plains were clear of any sign of them.

Zack shifted his attention back to the reactor, and to the enormous birds nesting atop it that were frankly bigger than most dragons. A mother condor and her fledgling baby--a fledgling that was still a _lot_ bigger than any human.

"Are those things friendly?" Zack wondered as the ship set down at the base of the hill. "Because I would _not_ want to fight one."

"Wouldn't recommend gettin' too close," said Barret, "but the villagers didn't mention havin' any trouble with 'em."

"Well, let's go say hi," said Jessie.

They instructed Reeve's men to stay put for the time being so as not to cause alarm, and one by one they climbed down from the Highwind's outer deck. Several men stood waiting for them at the entrance to a cave in the base of the hill.

One of them, a man with a shaved head who was almost as big as Barret, stepped forward. "AVALANCHE?" he asked warily.

"That's right," said Barret. He stepped close enough to hold out his prosthetic right hand. "I'm Barret. Had a talk the other night with your leader, Tobin."

The man nodded, accepting Barret's hand. "That's my father," he said. "I'm Graham."

"Good to meetcha."

"Likewise. And I'm glad you mentioned you'd be coming by airship. That's Shinra's, isn't it?"

"Used to be," Barret confirmed. "Some friends of ours liberated it for us."

Graham nodded. "Well, you all had better come on inside. My father will be wanting to speak with you."

The other men remained on guard at the entrance, and they followed Graham inside. The caves within were lit by a combination of bare bulbs and portable lamps, and Jessie voiced the question first:

"Are you using power from the reactor?"

"We are," Graham confirmed, "but we've got a back-up generator. So if you're really going to shut down the reactor, we'll be all right."

"Good to know," said Barret.

Graham brought them to his father, who sat at a table looking pensive. He was a much slighter man than his son, which made him look frail by comparison.

"Father, these are the people from AVALANCHE," said Graham.

Barret introduced himself again, and went on to introduce the rest of them, too. Tobin nodded thoughtfully.

"It's good to make your acquaintance in person," he said. "For a while there, it felt like we were the only ones fighting the Shinra... But then we heard about AVALANCHE. It bolstered our spirits. And now you're here."

"I know exactly how you feel," said Barret. "Felt like we were operatin' solo for a while, too. It's good to have allies."

"You guys can go on with your heart-to-heart," Reno cut in, "but I've got a job to do here. You got a way into that reactor that doesn't involve me getting pecked to death?"

Tobin nodded, his expression clouding a little with distrust. "Graham will show you."

"And I'll keep you two company," said Zack. Barret caught his eye and nodded appreciatively. He didn't trust Reno either.

Graham led them up through the caves and back outside through a little shack that sat at the base of the reactor proper. Above them loomed the shadow of the mother condor, her wings extending over the sides. Zack wondered how long just one of those primary feathers was.

"So what made you decide _that_ thing needed _your_ protection, huh?" Reno asked, craning his neck.

Graham glanced back at him. "You were with Shinra, weren't you? Are you going to tell me they _don't_ have weapons that could kill the condors?"

"Well, no," Reno admitted, "but compared to them, you kinda feel like us humans are just cannon fodder."

"I guess we'll find out," said Graham. From behind Reno, Zack gave him an apologetic shrug.

They rounded the hillside and came upon the entrance to the reactor.

"You two can go on ahead," said Graham. "I don't really like to go in there."

"I feel ya," said Zack. "Thanks for showing us the way."

Reno opened the door to go inside, and warm air wafted out into the dry autumn chill. Zack braced himself, and followed.

The smell brought him back to the Nibel reactor. Not the reactor of five years ago, but of three weeks ago, when he and Cloud and Tifa had returned there to wipe the thing off the face of the Planet. They'd planted one of Jessie's bombs above the Mako pit, just outside the room where Sephiroth had nearly killed each of them, and backed off to a safe distance to watch the explosion rip the reactor apart.

The layout of this reactor was different, but it felt the same. The hum of machinery vibrating in his bones, the Mako so thick in the air he could taste it. Reno walked through it without hesitation, as though he didn't even register it. He'd probably been in more reactors than Zack, with fewer nasty memories.

There was a control room just outside of Mako storage, but instead of accessing the controls that would have powered down the reactor, Reno went to a keypad on the wall. He entered a code, and a door Zack had mistaken for a wall panel opened with a hiss.

Beyond was a small room, where Mako was being piped into a glass cylinder in the center.

"It's _empty_ ," said Reno.

"Yep. I see it, too."

Reno went inside, as if a closer look might reveal something different. "Those country bumpkins," he muttered. "How were they even able to get to it?"

"Speaking as a country bumpkin myself," said Zack, "my guess is they're smarter than you give 'em credit for. Shinra hires local crews to help build the reactors, right? They probably figured out this little chamber was important somehow."

Reno sighed, and came back out into the control room. "Y'know, I was always against that policy. Doesn't work too well for keeping secrets."

"Wasn't that your job anyway?"

"Wouldn't've had to disappear as many people if they never found out this stuff in the first place."

Zack couldn't figure out quite what to say to that. Reno glanced up at him from the control panel.

"What? Were you expecting a huge shift in my moral fiber, now that I'm working with you guys? Reeve was just offering better benefits."

"So, you don't regret any of the stuff you did, working for Shinra?"

"Hmm." Reno keyed in a few commands, and he actually seemed to be giving it some thought. "Don't think I'd do Sector 7 again, if I could. That one sits a little too heavy, even for me. Plus, Tifa broke some bones that I don't think ever healed quite right."

"Guess that's something," said Zack.

Reno shrugged. "You don't need me on some big guilt spiral. You just need me to do my job." He pressed another few keys, and the mechanical hum surrounding them changed in pitch, dropping lower. "Like that," he said.

"Sounds like it's still on," Zack said skeptically.

"Look, it's not a damn light switch. It's gotta go through a whole cooldown process, unless you really do want this place to explode. Don't think that'd work out so well for the wildlife _or_ our new friends."

"Okay, okay. As long as it's happening."

Reno pushed past him out of the control room. "And you thought you could handle this on your own. They should never let you muscleheads anywhere near this kind of equipment."

"Would it kill you to be a little nicer, now that we _are_ working together?"

"No, but do I get anything out of it?"

"...friendship?" Zack offered.

Reno laughed. "I'll pass."

"Man, what kinda guy turns his nose up at friendship?"

"Got enough of it is all."

"You mean Rude?" Zack wondered doubtfully. The guy _never_ talked.

Reno turned enough to jab a finger towards him. "Don't go dissing my partner."

"Wouldn't dream of it." Zack followed Reno across the Mako pit, and they started up towards the exit. "So when you say 'partner'..."

"I mean partner," Reno finished decisively.

"That clarifies nothing."

"Good."

Zack let it drop. He wasn't interested in Reno's love life so much as he wanted to understand what made the guy tick. If he knew that, he'd have clearer odds on whether Reno was going to betray them. At least he thought he had one thing figured out: Reno and Rude were a package deal. Reno wouldn't turn on them unless Rude was down for it, too.

And maybe that was why he was here. Maybe Rude was the one who gave a damn.

Hard to tell with the no talking thing.

Back outside the reactor, the scene had changed. The sun was moving into the west, and along its path came a line of Shinra military trucks. On the hill below them, Reeve's men were already getting into position.

"Got here just in time, huh," said Reno.

"Looks like," Zack agreed. "Come on."

They passed more soldiers and mercenaries on their way back inside, where Graham was in the midst of speaking with his father. Zack found Barret and the others.

"Reactor's started its shutdown sequence," he said. "We get all our people off the Highwind?"

Barret nodded. "Kinda feel like we oughtta stay and lend a hand here, too, 'stead of up an' leavin' the second they show."

Zack shook his head. "No. We gotta make sure they don't get the materia from Corel either. We've got this. You three get going."

"Awright."

"Good luck," said Wedge, flashing him a thumbs up.

Jessie followed with a quick salute. "Give 'em hell for us."

"Thanks. Will do." Zack nodded to Cloud. "We oughtta get into position ourselves."

"The Huge Materia?" Reno prompted.

"We'll ask Tobin about it later. If they've got it, they've got it. We still gotta defend this place."

But the Shinra didn't attack that evening. They made camp a short distance away, and waited. Once Zack realized they were waiting for morning, he assigned a watch rotation, and the rest of them set up a camp of their own at the base of the hill.

Meanwhile, he sent a few people to scout the enemy camp.

"They've got as many men as we do," they reported back, "and there's a contingent of SOLDIERs. I counted five of them."

"Five? What class?"

But the men shook their heads. "Couldn't make out the uniform color in the dark."

Zack folded his arms, thinking. The number of troops made sense; Fort Condor had the advantage of a fortified position on a steep slope. But five SOLDIERs? For the mercenary force Shinra should have been expecting, that was overkill. So, had they anticipated running into AVALANCHE, or were they just being thorough?

"You can't take them all on yourself," said Cloud.

"Wasn't planning on it!" He slung an arm around Cloud. "Maybe we've only got one ex-SOLDIER here, but we've also got one of you."

"Me?"

"Yeah. They're just a bunch of Sephiroth wannabes, and you're one of the guys who took him out. Trust me, SOLDIER passed up a perfectly qualified candidate. One day you might even be better than me--you know, maybe. I'm pretty good."

Cloud smiled. Mission accomplished.

"Hate to interrupt your moment," said Reno, "but that's still five against two."

"Well, I'm betting they're mostly Second or Third Class," Zack reasoned. "Plus... We've got an ex-Turk, too. You might not be a musclehead like us, but that's gotta count for something."

Reno sighed. "All right. Fine."

Zack nodded in satisfaction... but he couldn't help wondering if Reno had tipped off Rufus about their coming here.

Cloud woke him when morning came, and they joined the troops on the hillside. Zack felt the weight of his new sword on his back. Since Holy had cleansed him of the Jenova, he wasn't as strong as he'd been, and this one was lighter than what he'd been used to in SOLDIER. It had been part of a small arsenal of weapons Yuffie had brought back with her from Wutai.

A Wutain blade, to fight Shinra soldiers.

Zack remembered his disappointment at seventeen, when the war had come to an end just months before he'd made First Class. He'd never gone to the front. More than seven years later, he was grateful for that.

He wondered how Sash was coping with the inevitable wrath of Yuffie. He'd tried to warn her, but she'd shrugged it off. He guessed they couldn't be getting along too terribly, considering the intel they'd retrieved just days after hooking up.

Pausing at the top of the slope, Zack looked out over the gathered soldiers. The sight of them brought his misgivings about this mission into sharp relief. Some of them had traded their blue uniforms for sturdy plainclothes, but most of them had held onto their armor, painting or taping over the Shinra logos. It was such a recent separation for them, and it was one thing to keep order in a Midgar no longer controlled by Rufus Shinra, but he wondered how they felt about heading into a battle against soldiers who wore nearly the same uniform. Soldiers who'd been their comrades.

And for Zack, was it so much different? Five years had passed, but five years that he'd been too drugged up to remember the better part of. He'd joined AVALANCHE at a time when their primary goal had been taking out Sephiroth, and their few skirmishes with Shinra had been brief. You couldn't call them battles, and Zack hadn't killed anyone.

Not exactly, anyway. His hands had killed plenty, when Sephiroth had had control of his body. And unfortunately, he remembered it more and more clearly with time.

Soldiers just like the ones on both sides now, killed for no reason. Hell, some of these guys had probably known the men he'd cut down that night in the Shinra building. Zack fought back the sudden urge to apologize.

Cloud was looking at him, checking on him.

Zack scratched his head. "Should probably say a few words to the troops, huh?"

"Probably."

Zack nodded to himself, cleared his throat, and raised his voice. "All right, everyone. I know this's gonna be rough for some of us. We're fighting people we used to think were on our side. But let's remember what we're fighting _for_. Shinra's here looking for a weapon they can use against us. This isn't just about defending this place, or the condors. It's about defending Midgar--the homes, and the families we've built there. Let's do 'em proud."


	4. Chapter 4

The Highwind couldn't get them directly to the Corel reactor; they spent the night outside North Corel, and in the morning, they entered the sorry excuse for a town. Barret hadn't been back here since...

Well, a lot of things had happened.

But Dyne's death was foremost in his mind. As they passed the first pile of junk, his muscles tensed, and he wondered if, somehow, they'd gotten word of it here. Barret could tell himself that Dyne had died a long time ago, but he hadn't really been gone until Barret had found him in that prison.

A walking death sentence, just like they said.

Jessie laid her hand on his arm. "Just remember. If anyone tries to slug you again, I'm right here."

Barret glanced down into her face, and it almost put him at ease.

The way she looked at him, sometimes he still didn't believe it. He'd seen her starry-eyed over a lot of men over the years, and he'd noticed he never exactly fit into that trend. It hadn't surprised him, her pining after Vincent. Get all that hair out of his face, and even Barret could admit he was a striking man. Pale and slender, quiet and reserved, he'd seemed to be all the things that Barret wasn't.

Seeing the familiar faces at the camp, he remembered how Myrna used to call him her 'handsome man,' sometimes to tease him, but usually in earnest. But he'd been younger then. Naive, but also guiltless. No blood on his hands, when she'd called him that. His spirit bright and his body whole. It had been an easier thing to believe.

Somehow, Jessie looked at him and still saw a good man. Even in the early days, when he'd first recruited her and Biggs into the fledgling AVALANCHE. His heart had been full of vengeance, but he'd spouted those lines about saving the Planet, and when that had been what convinced her, he'd believed in them a little more himself.

Wedge spoke up, drawing his attention back to the present. "I know you said it was bad here," he said, looking around, "but I can't believe your people live like this, Barret."

"Ain't got nowhere else to go," said Barret.

"For now maybe that's true," Jessie conceded, "but we can help them. Just like the people of Midgar."

Barret nodded, but it was a different situation from Midgar. He'd been thinking about it a lot lately. What to do about Corel.

Of all the reactors sucking the life from the Planet, Barret had always hated the Corel reactor the most. For years he'd envisioned the day when AVALANCHE would have the resources to return to it and destroy it, but it wasn't until these last few months, dealing with the fallout of Holy, that he'd considered the ramifications.

Midgar losing even half of its reactors hadn't just destabilized the city but the entire region. Kalm had lost power, too, and refugees had scattered across the continent. Shinra had walled itself off in Junon, holding onto its monopoly on the world's largest port and disrupting supply lines that people elsewhere had come to rely on.

The people of North Corel didn't have electricity, so they didn't rely on that reactor for power, but it brought other things. Destroying it would hurt Costa del Sol and put an end to Gold Saucer, and so the trade between them--the only reason anyone came through North Corel--would dry up completely. How would his people survive without those damn tourists passing through, deigning to buy some shoddy knickknack as a souvenir? Without Gold Saucer and its upkeep requiring the occasional outsourcing of manual labor?

The land was no good, anymore. The reactor had seen to that. His people couldn't eke out a living on it. And maybe with the loss of Mako, the world would need something to replace it, but Barret remembered the choking dark of the mines, and he knew that wasn't the way forward either.

More than once, he'd thought about the Midgar refugees, like Jessie suggested. People forced to leave the city in droves as entire sectors became unliveable, resettling wherever they could find space for themselves. Some of them were even willing to travel to Wutai, a land few from Midgar had seen except as soldiers fighting an intractable enemy.

In Corel, the war had been a distant thing. No one had much cared about Wutai. The animosity wasn't there, and he wondered if any of _his_ people would be willing to make that journey, for a better life.

Doubtful.

Barret was the only one who had left Corel Valley. This was their land, their home, no matter if it couldn't support them. One day it would be their grave, the same as Dyne.

So, there had to be a way forward for them _here_. There had to be a way to breathe life back into _this_ place.

Yeah... There had to be a way. And with someone as smart as Jessie putting her mind to it, it wouldn't be long before they thought of it.

"One day..." he said quietly, "this place's gonna be one I can bring Marlene to. One day she's gonna see the land where she was born, an' the people she was meant to be a part of."

"I like to think _we_ were meant to be her people," said Jessie, "but I get what you mean, Barret. We'll get there. Don't you worry about it."

"Yeah."

Her words made him wonder, though, if it still made sense to call these _his_ people. He had a responsibility to them, because of his part in what had been done to them, but he'd thrown his lot in with a different group. He was building his life elsewhere. Myrna forgive him, but even in that, he was moving on.

They earned more than a few dirty looks as they passed through the town, but nothing like the welcoming committee of a few months prior. No one wanted anything to do with him, that was all. And that was fair.

They followed the old train tracks into the mountains. Tracks that his people had laid to help carry materials up to the reactor when they'd been building it. The memory of his own enthusiasm for the project didn't spark the same fury as it once had, but it left a bad taste in his mouth. He'd helped build the world they were living in just as much as anyone in Shinra.

The difference was, now he was working to undo that damage. He was working to make it better.

They stopped to rest atop the drawbridge, halfway to the reactor. Wedge sat down just at the pylon, but Jessie walked a little way farther and sat down with her legs dangling, looking into the river below. Barret joined her.

Jessie glanced back at Wedge, then nudged Barret in the side and said, "You remember the last time we came through here?"

"Yep. Only this time we're pretendin' we _ain't_ datin.'"

"We should just _tell_ him," Jessie insisted. "Marlene doesn't get to see him that often these days, we're _way_ more likely to tip her off than he is."

"Ah... maybe so. I been puttin' it off 'cause I wanted Yuffie to know first, but that's done now. Only problem she had with it was how long it's been without us tellin.'"

"So?"

"What, right this second?"

"Have you got something better to do?"

Barret scratched his head. He'd hated to do this to Jessie; asking her to keep her affection a secret went against her nature. And she was right. Now that the older of his adopted daughters knew about them, it was time to tell the rest of their friends.

Kind of awkward out of the blue though.

"Hey, uh, Wedge!" he called. "C'mere a second."

Wedge pushed himself up from his seat and came to join them. "What's up?"

Barret glanced at Jessie, who nodded encouragingly. "Well, uh... There's somethin' me an' Jess've been wantin' to tell you, but we were sorta waitin' to see if it stuck, I guess."

"Okay..." Wedge said slowly, without comprehension.

Barret faltered, and Jessie leaned forward. "We're dating!" she announced.

"What?" said Wedge, his eyes going wide in surprise. "You two are dating? Since when?"

"Since Cosmo Canyon," Barret confessed.

"That was months ago!" Wedge cried. "I can't believe you guys. Jessie, how did _you_ manage to keep it a secret this whole time?"

"It's taken _monumental_ effort on my part," Jessie said theatrically. "Thanks for acknowledging it."

Wedge was still shaking his head in astonishment. "Who else knows? Am I the last to know?"

"Nah, you ain't the last," Barret assured him. "We told Tifa an' Aeris 'bout near the start, an' I told Yuffie after her party. That's it for now."

"Marlene doesn't know?"

"Not yet... That's what we're keepin' it secret for. I'm still workin' out how to have that conversation."

"I'm sure she'd be happy for you," Wedge insisted.

"Well, we hope she is," said Jessie, "but it's complicated, right? Barret might not be her only family, but he's the center of her world. We'd hate for her to think that anyone might take that away from her."

She glanced at Barret, and he smiled ruefully. They'd talked about it plenty of times, the two of them, and now she was just repeating what he'd told her, time and again. He still believed it. If Marlene felt, even for a moment, that he loved her any less? He couldn't bear it.

But it was becoming clearer as time went on that this wasn't just a fluke, or one of Jessie's flings. They'd already lasted longer than most of her relationships, and Barret didn't see it ending. He hadn't wanted to upset Marlene's life with something fleeting, but this _wasn't_. So, he had to tell her.

Even if that moment happened.

But gods if he didn't want to do everything he could to make sure it didn't.

"Well, _I_ 'm happy for you," said Wedge.

"Heh. Thanks, man."

"Man, everybody's pairing off, though. I'm gonna be the only single one left..."

"That ain't true," said Barret. "Reeve's single. Sash, too. And, uh... well, Vincent."

Jessie threw him a look that he knew was entirely deserved for that one. Vincent was only single because Lucrecia had died. He was basically a widower, and Barret should've known better.

"Oh, and Yuffie," Jessie added. "I don't think she's even interested in dating."

"I can't even picture it," said Wedge.

"Good," said Barret. "She's still a kid, no matter what she says."

Jessie smiled. "You're going to be that overprotective dad who scares off any suitors with a shotgun, aren't you?"

"Well..."

"I think you can back off. She'll do it herself if they're not up to her standards."

Barret scratched his head and didn't argue. She was probably right, and Yuffie was going to have some high standards if she ever did get into romance. If anything, she'd need more encouragement than protection, to see to it she didn't chase off the right person.

He probably knew more about that anyway.

They pressed on towards the reactor. As it came into sight, Barret led them up to an overlook, where they could get a look at it without being in plain view.

On reaching the top of the ladder, though, he was struck by the pang of loss.

The last time he'd stood here was over four years ago, with Dyne by his side. Back then, they hadn't looked at the reactor, but in the other direction, towards the line of smoke on the horizon where their home had been.

Barret flexed his hand. The metal digits clicked together without him feeling a thing, but he remembered the pain clear enough. He'd shredded his own shirt to staunch the bleeding of his mangled arm, and he'd pushed himself to keep moving south. By the time he'd reached Corel, the Shinra soldiers were leaving, and the fire had done most of its work. He'd found Myrna's body in the cinders of their house, and he'd felt in the moment that it was a curse not to have died, too. Like Dyne, like Myrna, like everyone. He'd intended nothing more in that moment than to lie down beside her, and let that be the end.

But then... Marlene. He'd heard Marlene crying.

Barret felt the thrumming of the reactor in the earth beneath his feet, and somewhere beneath that, he heard something else now. The cry of the Planet.

He thought he'd felt it before, in the No. 1 Reactor, and in the reactor on Mt. Nibel, but he hadn't heard its voice then. It was possible he'd only imagined it. The leader of AVALANCHE, fighting to save the Planet, of course he should've been able to hear it crying out.

This time, he did. He recognized this sound from Bugenhagen's machine. Aeris was always saying that, even since Holy, this was the loudest thing, and it'd be the first to reach his human ears. He glanced at his friends, wondering if they'd picked up on it, too, but he didn't ask just yet. They had a job to do.

He joined them, lying on their stomachs, peering through the bars of he railing at the reactor's entrance below.

Barret hadn't been this close to it since its construction more than four years ago. It sat there, bounded by the peaks of the Corel mountains, and sucked the life from his homeland. The trees had gone from the slopes surrounding it, leaving nothing but bare rock. And he'd helped bring this monstrosity into being, thinking somehow it would do the opposite.

"No guards," Wedge observed.

"That could be a good sign," said Jessie. "The way this place operated pre-Holy, they were relying mostly on passcodes and the remote location to do their security. If they haven't changed up their personnel assignments--which, maybe they haven't, since they've had enough to deal with--then we're talking mostly engineers and no more than half a dozen security guards."

"Sounds like smooth sailing," said Wedge.

"Could be," said Barret, "but maybe not. We oughtta have a better idea once we see whether the codes Reeve gave us still work."

"Shall we?" Jessie proposed.

They climbed back down from the overlook and approached the reactor.

"All right," said Jessie, her fingers poised over a control panel beside the door. "Now, this thing isn't _supposed_ to sound an alarm after the first wrong input, but I can't guarantee that. So let's be prepared, okay?"

"Got it," said Barret, though he had to fight the years-ingrained instinct to raise the gun arm he no longer had. Instead he unslung the machine gun from his back and held it ready.

But the code worked, and the door slid open without sounding an alarm or summoning any guards. Barret went in first, scanned the route ahead of them, and motioned the others after him.

Jessie had been studying the schematics on the flight over, and she gave directions. The layout was different from the Midgar reactors, even though everything else about it felt familiar. He remembered how proud they'd been, after taking out the No. 1 Reactor. They'd taken their little jabs at Shinra before, but that had elevated them to a whole new level.

Barret didn't really like the man he'd been that night, when he looked back on it. He didn't like what he'd pushed his team into doing. It had been a step forward, but a step in the wrong direction.

They came across an engineer the second level down. He froze in startlement at the sight of them, and Barret struck him with the butt of his gun before he could shout. He went down, and Jessie cast a Silence spell on him before he could recover. They dragged him out of sight behind some crates and left him tied to a railing.

The next one, they couldn't deal with so silently. She was working at a computer station, and though they tried to creep up on her, she spotted them and reached for the alarm. It was blaring before Barret reached her and pulled her away from the keyboard.

"Help!" she shouted, struggling in his grip.

"I ain't gonna hurt you," Barret said. "Just can't have you in the way."

He wrestled her to a section of railing too far for her to reach any buttons, and Wedge bound her hands while Jessie tried to turn off the alarm.

"You can't do this!" the engineer cried. "You can't leave me here!"

"One o' your friends'll be around sooner or later, yeah?"

"But if it's later...!" She was terrified, tears starting to well up in her eyes.

"She thinks we're here to blow the reactor," Jessie observed.

Barret glanced at her, then back at the woman. "Woah, hey now. We ain't here for that. Certainly wouldn't leave ya tied up here if we were. You got that?"

"Why should I believe you? It's what happened in Midgar."

He frowned, unable to deny it. Whatever Shinra might've been saying about the reactors Holy had destroyed, AVALANCHE _hadn't_ tried to warn anyone about the No. 1 Reactor bombing. They'd blown it knowing there were people still inside--guards they'd knocked unconscious along the way, night shift engineers who didn't realize the place was about to come down on their heads.

"Guess you got no reason to trust us," Barret conceded, "but all I can give you's my word. We're tryin' to do things different now. Y'all are on the wrong side... but I used to believe in Shinra, too. Maybe one day you'll figure out they ain't too trustworthy either."

The alarm cut out suddenly. "C'mon, Barret," said Jessie. "We should get moving. Wherever security _is_ , they're probably on their way to investigate."

"Right," he said, and straightened.

Security found them just as they reached the entrance to Mako storage. Too far back for a clear shot, their bullets ricocheted off the doorframe as Barret urged the others on through ahead of him. They ducked to either side until the door shut automatically behind them.

"This thing lock, Jess?"

She shook her head. "It might, but they're gonna catch up before I figure it out."

"Awright, then I guess we gotta deal with 'em now."

To their credit, the guards weren't stupid enough to come charging straight through. When the door opened again, they had ducked to either side of it, trying to assess the situation first. What they hadn't prepared for was for Jessie to toss one of her flashbangs through the door. Wedge smashed the button to close it again, and they heard the muffled bang on the other side.

Barret was through first. In a panic, one of the guards fired wildly, nearly hitting one of his comrades before Barret wrenched the rifle out of his hands and threw it aside. There were four men, and between the three of them, they managed to disarm all of them before the effects of the flashbang started to wear off.

Jessie made sure their weapons were out of reach, and as their vision returned, the knot of disoriented guards found themselves staring down the barrels of Barret and Wedge's guns. They exchanged glances, and two of them cautiously put their hands up. They walked the guards back to a bit of piping and had them cuff themselves to it and toss Jessie the keys.

"You're not going to kill us?" one of them asked at last, still speaking too loudly. "Aren't you AVALANCHE?"

"Hoo-boy," said Wedge.

"Got a bit of a reputation to shake, don't we?" said Barret, exchanging glances with Jessie.

"No, we're not going to kill you," Jessie told them, raising her voice to be sure they heard her over the ringing in their ears. "Just sit tight and we'll be out of your hair in no time."

Jessie led the way back into Mako storage, and they climbed down to the lower level. A whole pit of the Planet's lifeblood churned in front of them, and he could still hear the Planet crying out, like an undercurrent to the hum of machinery around them.

But instead of taking the catwalk across the Mako pit, they turned into the control room behind them.

"All right, now we just need to find the control panel to access the Huge Materia," said Jessie.

"Didn't Reeve tell you?"

"I got the code from Reno, but where to enter it wasn't exactly in the schematics... I don't think it was part of Reeve's design. Top secret, I guess!"

"Well, let's have a look around," Barret decided.

The control room of the Corel reactor, he thought. There had to be all kinds of trouble they could cause in here, but he pushed it to the back of his mind for now. This mission was about getting the Huge Materia, so Shinra wouldn't be able to use it to fuck with Midgar any more than they already had.

"You know," Wedge spoke up, "I think I can see it."

"Huh?" said Barret, shooting him a glance. It didn't sound like he was talking about the control panel.

"You two," Wedge clarified. "You're always so in sync when we're on a mission. Although, to tell you the truth, I used to think you and Tifa were a thing."

Barret sputtered. "Wha--? But Tifa's--!" He found himself lowering his voice, even though it was just the three of them. "You _know_ Tifa's a lesbian, right?"

"Of course I do. But you guys used to share a bed sometimes, so you can see why a person'd get the wrong idea."

Jessie had half-turned to look at him in amusement. "That was for Marlene," he said. "Made her feel safe."

"They still do it sometimes," Jessie put in helpfully.

"Seriously?" said Wedge.

"What? It's just sleepin.'"

Wedge looked skeptical. "Well..."

Jessie walked over to loop her hand through Barret's arm, leaning her head against his shoulder in a quick hug. "I know my man. He'd never even dream of it."

Barret wasn't sure he was any less embarrassed with that than with the two of them teasing him. Even back home, she didn't often show him affection in front of anyone else, because Marlene was always with one of them.

He cleared his throat and gestured at random to one of the panels in front of him. "So's this the one?"

"Oh, no," said Jessie. "I found it a second ago, but I didn't want to ruin the moment."

Barret threw her a look, but she just smiled and pulled away. Wedge was grinning at him, and he folded his arms.

Barret half-expected the code not to work, but Reno must have been more trustworthy than they gave him credit for, because as soon as Jessie entered it, a door they hadn't even noticed slid open, revealing a small chamber. It was cramped enough that Barret let Jessie go in alone, though he stood in the doorway to keep an eye on things.

From a glass container in the center of the room, Jessie pulled a huge chunk of green crystal. Holding it in both hands, she stood for a moment with her eyes wide.

"Damn," she said. "I don't have the first clue how to use this thing, but it feels _powerful_."

"We oughtta get it to Aeris," Barret suggested. "Bet she'd know."

"Yeah, maybe." Jessie maneuvered the materia carefully into her pack and adjusted it across her shoulders. "All right, we got what we came for."

"Guess we're not shutting down the reactor today..." said Wedge. "One of those engineers would just come along and start it up again."

"Yeah," Jessie agreed, casting the controls a rueful glance as she stepped back into the room with them.

"Don't think we're ready for it anyway," said Barret.

"Ready?" Wedge wondered.

"We cut the power without warning... an' we pull the plug on the hospital in Costa del Sol. We strand the folks up at Gold Saucer. An' I don't even know what other kinda collateral damage we cause. Back when we bombed the No. 1 Reactor, we thought we were prepared for that. We thought we could justify it, sayin' we were savin' the Planet. Now..." Barret shook his head. "The Planet's gonna have to accept my apology, 'cause I can't put any more o' that on my conscience."

Looking back at him, Jessie and Wedge nodded. Then Jessie turned back to the control panel.

"Well, we can at least give the Planet a breather," she said. "I think I can put this thing in low-power mode, and even if I can't change the password, it'll take those engineers a little while to bring it back up to normal."

Barret didn't know how to express how that gesture made him feel. All he could say was, "Thanks, Jess."

On their way out, they passed the guards they'd left handcuffed to the rail. Jessie pulled the keys from her pocket and tossed them to the floor just out of easy reach. "Imagine someone'll be along soon enough to help you out," she said.

Wedge turned to walk backwards as they started to leave the guards behind. "And just remember: don't believe everything Shinra tells you. Especially about AVALANCHE!"

"I wonder if assaulting and tying them up will really get them to question what they've heard about us," Jessie wondered wryly as they continued on.

"Well, it ain't exactly the M.O. we been ascribed," said Barret, though he didn't have high expectations either. "We're s'posed to be the ones who did that massacre at the Shinra building when President Shinra got killed."

"Plus we're gonna walk out of this place, and it won't blow up," added Wedge.

"Come to think of it," said Jessie, "if the regular crews don't know anything about the Huge Materia, they're gonna be real confused about what we even did here, aren't they?"

"Almost feel bad for 'em," Barret chuckled. "That's gotta make a person paranoid."

They didn't run into any more trouble inside the reactor. Outside, a knot of engineers had gathered some distance away, the woman they'd run into earlier among them, and they shifted uneasily as the three of them stepped out into daylight.

With them, too, was a single Shinra soldier. Barret aimed his gun in their direction, preempting that soldier from making any stupid moves.

Jessie, though, waved to them. "It's really not going to explode!" she called. "But a little fresh air won't kill you either."

"Not sure I'd call this fresh," said Barret, wrinkling his nose.

"Better than in there," said Jessie.

They kept a cautious eye on the reactor personnel as they left the reactor behind, but they all seemed to have enough sense not to pick a fight. Still, even after those Shinra jumpsuits had fallen out of sight behind the cleft in the mountain, Barret took up the rear position to make sure no one was following.

As the minutes passed with no sign of pursuit, they picked up the pace. The farther they got from the reactor, the cleaner the air smelled, and... that undercurrent of alarm from the Planet faded out of hearing, too. Barret watched his friends breathing in the air, and he wondered again.

"So, did y'all hear that back there?"

"Hear what?" asked Wedge.

"What Aeris always talks about, what we heard from Bugenhagen's machine... The cries of the Planet."

Wedge exchanged glances with Jessie, who gave a shrug. "I can't say I did," she admitted. "But it doesn't surprise me if you're hearing it before we are, Barret. You're the one who got us into this. You're the one who knew first that there was anything to listen for."

Barret nodded. Disappointed, he had to admit, that they couldn't share this with him just yet, but they'd get there. Much as they each had their own reasons for wanting to stick it to the Shinra, their need for revenge had never run as deep as his. Their desire to help the Planet had been genuine from the start. They'd get there.

They made it back down to the drawbridge by mid-afternoon. Once they'd crossed it, Barret gave Jessie a boost up to the control booth, where she switched it into its raised position, just in case. If anyone _did_ decide to follow, they'd have a hard time catching up now.

"You know, Barret," said Jessie as they continued on, looking back towards the bridge, "it's actually pretty through here. I can see why a person'd get attached to it."

"Ain't been home for a while, though."

She looked up at him, thoughtful. "Are you saying you wouldn't wanna come back?"

"...I dunno," he admitted. "If I'm bein' honest... it was never really part o' the plan. I've never figured on bein' forgiven, an' I don't want Marlene hearin' the things they say about me. I just thought maybe... maybe one day I'd feel right enough with myself that I could come back here an' see some good in it again. Wouldn't be to stay, though."

"Well, if you ever change your mind... I'm just saying, I think I could be persuaded."

Barret couldn't help a smile. "Heh. Good to know."

Jessie reached for his hand, and twined her fingers through his. With a start, Barret looked ahead, but Wedge was walking a good distance in front of them. Probably on purpose, knowing him. He was good at reading people.

Barret had wanted to call Kalm once they were safely back on the Highwind, but the afternoon was getting closer to sundown and they were still picking their way down the mountain. Back in Kalm, it would be evening, drawing closer to Marlene's bedtime.

Assuming Aeris put her to bed on time. Of course Barret trusted Aeris to protect his daughter with her life, but when it came to upholding such mundane rules as bedtime, she was less reliable.

She was prompt about answering her phone at least. "Hi, Barret!" she said brightly. "How did it go?"

"Couldn'ta gone much smoother," he answered.

"Papa!" Marlene exclaimed before he could go into any details. "Does that mean you're coming home soon?"

"Gonna be a couple more days. We got one more errand out this way, but it ain't gonna be any trouble. I bet you're havin' lots o' fun with Aeris anyhow."

Marlene brightened at that. "I helped with deliveries!" she said.

"That right?"

"Two birthdays and an anniversary," Aeris confirmed. "Busy day."

Compared to what she'd said of her business back in Midgar, it really wasn't, but she hadn't been long established as a florist in Kalm.

"What's that make now?" Jessie cut in from beside him. "A straight week of deliveries? You're really building that customer base fast."

"It helps to have such a good assistant," Aeris said, and Marlene giggled.

"Ahh, I wish I had one to help out in Sector 5," said Wedge. "I'm always worried we're ruining your poor garden, Aeris."

"As long as you're not letting Zack help, I trust you. I love him, but he's got absolutely no green thumb whatsoever." Wedge laughed, and she went on, "Anyway, it definitely sounds like a success. You seem in good spirits."

"Yeah," Barret confirmed. "Jess says this Huge Materia feels pretty powerful. We want you to get a look at it."

"I'm definitely... curious," said Aeris, though she sounded hesitant.

"No biggie if it ain't somethin' you can figure out either," he told her. "The important thing's that the Shinra can't use it."

"Right," said Aeris, and the confidence was back in her voice. "I guess we'd better swing by the bar and tell Tifa. She was worried, you know."

"Of course she was," said Jessie, rolling her eyes, even though she'd probably had worries herself.

"Oh, and you should let Yuffie know," Aeris added. "She got in a few hours ago. Said there was definitely a team on that ship with her."

"Figured as much, but good to know," said Barret. "But before you go an' tell Tifa, d'you mind if I...?"

"Talk a while with Marlene?" Aeris finished. "Of course not. Here you go, sweetheart. I'll be just upstairs, okay?"

"Okay!" answered Marlene.

There was the sound of a chair scraping back, Aeris moving off. On either side of him, Jessie and Wedge slowed to drop back a few steps. He didn't mind if they overheard, but all the same, it was nice to have the space to talk to his daughter.

"You down in the kitchen right now?" Barret asked her.

"Uh-huh! We were doin' the dishes. Aeris says it'll make Miss Phoebe like us more."

"She ain't wrong," Barret admitted. By now he thought they'd mostly won over their landlady, as perplexed as she remained about them, but they still needed to _stay_ in her good graces. She'd have no shortage of other potential tenants if she decided to turn them out. "It's Miss Phoebe's house," he went on, "so she likes when we help her keep it nice an' clean."

"She asked me..." Marlene hesitated, in a way that made him brace himself. "Miss Phoebe asked me something funny today. When me an' Aeris were going to give people flowers, she asked if I was helping my mama."

Inwardly, Barret cursed himself for never taking the time to have that talk with their landlady. People had made assumptions about Tifa in the past, but no one had ever had the audacity to ask Marlene herself.

"She thought Aeris was your mama?" was what he said.

"Uh-huh."

"What'd you say?"

"My mama's with the Planet," said Marlene. "That's what you said."

"...that's right." He thought of Eleanor's grave, on the edge of that cliff, and Dyne's now, beside it. He wondered if they'd found each other in the Lifestream. If Dyne was at peace. "Did it bother you, her askin' about that?"

"I don't know."

Barret wished this was a conversation they were having in person, so he could take her in his arms, but he'd have to put his reassurance into words, as best he could. "It's true, a lotta little girls have mamas," he said. "It ain't bad to be different from them. You an' me, we always had Tifa helpin' us out, an' then Jessie, an' now Aeris, too. But there's nothin' wrong with wantin' what's normal either."

"Can I pick a mama?" Marlene asked. "Like Yuffie picked you."

"You could, if you wanted," Barret said carefully. "We should probably all talk about it, like Yuffie talked to us. We both wanted her to be part of our family, so now she is."

"Okay."

"You got someone in mind?"

"I don't know..." Marlene said again, and he felt some relief knowing that this probably hadn't been on her mind any longer than one afternoon. He'd told her a little about Eleanor, when she'd been even younger, because he'd expected her to wonder about it once she heard other kids talking about their mothers. But until now, she'd never expressed any desire for one. AVALANCHE had been more than enough family for her, he'd thought. He'd hoped.

"All right," he said. "You think on it as long as you want to, baby girl, an' we can talk about it some more when I get home."

"Yeah."

"Wanna tell you some about Corel, too, I think," he added, to take her mind off of it.

"That's where you're at right now?"

"That's right. This's right around where your papa grew up, you know."

"Oh! In the, um... the valley?"

Barret smiled. "Yep, that's the one. Got mountains all around."

"Like Wutai?"

"Well... A little different from Wutai. You remember those mountains we flew over after pickin' up Tifa an' Aeris from their vacation? They look sorta like those. But I'll take you one day, so you can see for yourself."

"Really?"

"Absolutely. Just gotta make sure it's safe first."

"I liked when we went all those places, on the ship," said Marlene.

"Me, too," he said. "I liked havin' you with me."

"Come home soon, Papa."

His heart always broke a little when she said that. "Just a couple more days, sweetheart," he promised. "You be a good girl an' go on lookin' after Tifa an' Aeris for me, awright?"

"Okay!"

"Speakin' o' which, you an' Aeris've got some good news to go tell Tifa before bed. So you an' me, we should probably say goodnight."

"You'll call tomorrow?" she asked.

"You know I will."

"Okay. Goodnight, Papa."

"Goodnight, baby girl."

Reluctantly, Barret ended the call. By now, the sun was setting, and they had nearly reached the base of the mountain. Jessie returned to walk beside him, looking cautiously up into his face.

"...starting to wonder more about her mom, huh?" she said.

"Yeah," said Barret. So she _had_ been listening. "Guess it's about time we had _that_ conversation, once I get back."

"You don't mean, about Dyne?"

"If she's thinkin' about it, I figure it's time. Right?"

"...yeah. You're probably right."

Barret could guess she was thinking about the other thing he had yet to tell Marlene. And the two weren't completely unrelated. He wasn't sure how much Marlene had put together that parents were usually a couple--there'd been so many broken families in the slums--but if she knew he was with Jessie, then would she be more inclined to think of Jessie as a mother? Would that turn it into a positive thing, to tell her that now, too? Or would it overwhelm her?

"I can be patient a little longer, you know," said Jessie, guessing his thoughts, too. She gave him a nudge and a conspiratorial look. "Sneaking around's not _all_ bad."

From behind them, Wedge cleared his throat.

"Anyway," Jessie went on brightly, "I guess we'd better call your _other_ kid. Maybe we can catch dinner with her in Costa del Sol."

Barret shook his head. "Dunno how her stomach'll feel about that after four days at sea."

"Well, she's had a few hours to recover her appetite, but I can't imagine it did much for her mood either. That's what the company's for!"

"Heh. Yeah, all right. Let's give 'er a call."

Ahead of them, North Corel was coming into sight, but not even a little did it feel like coming home. It wasn't where his family was. Barret lifted his gaze instead to the Highwind, waiting for them beyond. By air, Costa del Sol wasn't far at all.


	5. Chapter 5

Yuffie didn't mind Costa del Sol. It was still a Shinra town, but not in any obvious way, once you left the harbor. It was like the people who lived here never put much thought into who kept their lights on, so if somebody besides Shinra and something besides Mako took care of that for them, they'd be just as happy.

Not that complacency was a _great_ thing, but it was practically a breath of fresh air after all the blind, jingoistic loyalty that permeated Junon.

And then there was the ocean. Not marred or blocked from view by any military base, but right there in front of you. The sun had set a while ago now, and the sea glittered darkly in the deepening twilight.

Funny how she felt so disconnected from the water on boats. Only here on the beach did she feel again like it was trying to tell her something. Rivers feeding the ocean. A half-remembered message lost in the moment of waking.

"Yuffie!"

She turned at the sound of Jessie's voice and pulled herself together quick enough to dodge the attempted hug.

"Ahh, what is this," said Jessie, "birthdays only?"

"Sounds good to me," said Yuffie, and she kept a wary eye on Barret as he approached behind Jessie.

"Hi, Yuffie," said Wedge, apparently the only one of them with manners. "I hope we didn't keep you waiting too long."

"Nah," she said. "There're worse places to wait. Anyway, did you bring that Huge Materia down with you or is it back on the ship?"

"I've got it," said Jessie. "I had a feeling you'd be more interested in that than dinner with us old farts."

"Speak for yourself, I'm not old," said Wedge, and Jessie stuck her tongue out at him.

"Those Shinra soldiers clear out o' here?" Barret asked her, glancing up and down the beach.

Costa del Sol was still plenty warm to Yuffie, but it was cooler than the summer months, and it wasn't attracting quite so many tourists. Maybe everything going down with Shinra had had its impact, too. Either way, even the few tourists had left the beach come sundown, and they had it to themselves.

"Yeah, they took off hours ago," Yuffie confirmed. "Aeris told me you guys had already made it to North Corel, so I figured there wasn't any reason to tail them."

Barret nodded. "I expect not. We'll just let 'em waste their time."

Jessie caught Yuffie's expectant look before she had to prompt her again, and she carefully eased a huge hunk of green crystal out of her bag. Yuffie accepted it with both hands, and the weight of it stunned her for a second.

Not the physical weight--it was about as heavy as it looked--but the weight of everything locked up inside of it.

Regular materia wasn't really a source for magic, Yuffie understood that; it was more like instructions, everything the Ancients had learned in order to cast a particular spell compressed into a little orb that fit in the palm of your hand. Like someone building you a machine to do something really complicated, but all you had to do was push a button.

This was different. There was so _much_ knowledge compressed into this hunk of crystal that Yuffie couldn't pick out the individual threads. It was full of thoughts, almost alive in her hands. She shook her head, handing it back to Jessie.

"Kinda makes me dizzy," she admitted.

"Right?" said Jessie. "There's so much packed in here... Hopefully Aeris can make some sense of it."

"Yeah," Yuffie agreed, though she couldn't help her disappointment. She'd thought it would've cleared something up for her.

Jessie caught something in her expression and clapped a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry about it so much. If Aeris _can_ figure it out, I'm sure you'll learn it from her in no time."

"So," said Wedge, "does this mean we're finally eating? I've never had seafood before."

" _Never_?" Yuffie repeated incredulously.

"The farm's not exactly ocean-front property, and you've been to the Midgar slums. Would _you_ trust the fish there?"

Yuffie was inclined to agree with him on that one, but Jessie was rolling her eyes. "You're just a big wuss. I've eaten plenty of slums seafood, and look how not dead I am."

Barret had already turned to lead the way towards the restaurants, but over his shoulder he said, "Didn't you get food poisoning that one time in Wall Market?"

"Once!" she said. "That was one time. And we don't know for sure it was the octopus."

Wedge grimaced and exchanged looks with Yuffie behind their backs.

"I like octopus," Yuffie confided privately, "but you're right. I would _not_ have it in Midgar."

Costa del Sol cuisine, on the other hand, wasn't half bad. Nothing like what Yuffie could get back home, but a decent choice for someone's first experience with seafood.

There were rooms up on the Highwind that they could've spent the night in, but Yuffie didn't like the way the ship bobbed even at rest, and it wasn't hard to persuade the others to pay another visit to that cheap-ass inn they'd stayed at before. She tried not to put too much thought into why Barret and Jessie in particular warmed to it, or why the normally frugal pair shelled out for separate rooms.

But even on solid ground, with the sound of the ocean outside her window, Yuffie slept fitfully. Something gnawed just at the edge of her thoughts. She was missing something.

She gave up on sleeping not long before dawn and left Wedge alone in the room to head outside, back down to the beach. Ahead of her, the sky was growing lighter. She kicked her shoes off and let her toes sink into the sand. The waves came up over her bare feet, the cold water making her shiver.

She stood there a while, and gradually the waves no longer reached her toes. The tide was going out. The ocean, pulling away from her.

The rivers going dry.

Yuffie furrowed her brow. "I don't understand," she said aloud. "Leviathan, what are you trying to tell me?"

Of course there wasn't any answer. Aeris always said the Planet didn't speak with words, and Yuffie guessed Leviathan didn't either, but it sure would make things a lot easier.

A while after the sun had come up over the water, she heard the shuffle of footsteps approaching through the sand.

"Thought I might find ya down here," said Barret. "You kinda got a thing for water, don'tcha?"

Yuffie didn't look at him, but he came to stand beside her, appearing at the edge of her vision. "You noticed, huh?"

"Seems to suit ya," he said. "So, how long've you been up?"

"...a while."

"I can tell you got somethin' on your mind," Barret went on. "I'm happy to lend an ear if you're lookin' for one."

Yuffie's first impulse was to reject the offer. She'd been keeping it to herself for weeks now. At first, she'd tried hard to ignore it in hopes that it would go away, and now that she was looking at it dead on, it kept slipping away out of sight. If she couldn't even pin it down in her mind, she didn't know how she was going to trap it with words.

But staring at the ocean wasn't helping.

"You ever had a recurring dream?" she asked.

"Sure," said Barret. "Ain't usually a good thing."

"Yeah..."

"You wanna tell me about it?"

Yuffie hesitated. The surf receded, water receding, but the next wave followed, sliding gently ashore. "All the water's gone from Wutai," she said. "Everything turns black and starts breaking apart. And... my mom is there, and she's trying to tell me something, but I can never remember it once I wake up."

"Sounds rough," Barret said sympathetically, "but I dunno that it means anything, 'cept that maybe you're feelin' conflicted about leavin' Wutai."

"Maybe," she said. She couldn't bring herself to explain to him how rare it was for her to dream about her mother. Yuffie had been so young when she'd died, her memories of her mother were indistinct, more like feelings than images. Not like the face she'd been seeing in her dreams, one she knew on sight but couldn't picture now.

"But-- I'm not sure," she went on. "I get this feeling..." _What_ feeling? "I don't know. I keep thinking, Leviathan's trying to tell me something. For some reason I thought the Huge Materia'd make it clearer, but it didn't."

"Well..." She could feel Barret studying her, thoughtful. "You got a real connection to that god o' yours. Ain't none of us could say otherwise. If you got a feelin' in your gut that he's got somethin' to tell you, you're probably right. Just wish I knew how to help you figure it out."

Yuffie nodded. Of course he couldn't really help. But... maybe it did make her feel a little better, hearing him say that it wasn't just her imagination.

"If it's got somethin' to do with the Huge Materia though," Barret went on abruptly, "well, then maybe Aeris could help."

"I'm kinda s'posed to be getting back to Junon," said Yuffie.

"Sash's got it covered for now. Anyhow, a message from a god? Don't seem like we could get much better intel than that."

Finally, Yuffie looked at him.

"Ha! There's a smile," Barret said triumphantly.

"Yeah, okay." Yuffie tried to shrug it off. "Are the others up yet? We still got a job to do."

"Listen to you, all task-focused," Barret chuckled. "They're catchin' breakfast before we head out. We oughtta join 'em."

"Think I'll pass on eating 'til we get there."

"I thought that doodad Cloud gave you was helpin'?"

" _Helping_ ," Yuffie emphasized. "And I haven't tried it in the air yet."

"Fair enough. We'll getcha one o' those to-go boxes. C'mon."

Yuffie retrieved her shoes, carrying them loosely in one hand, and she and Barret made their way back across the beach.

"So," she said, "what is it with you people and naming yourselves random words anyway? Sash, Wedge, Rude... Cloud's kind of a weird pick, too."

"Don't look at me, I didn't name any of 'em. Think 'Sash' is short for 'Sasha' though."

"'Sasha' needed to be shorter?" Yuffie asked dubiously.

Barret shrugged. "Folks like nicknames."

It was at that moment that Yuffie remembered she was talking to someone who'd felt the need to cut 'Tifa' and 'Jessie' down to one syllable, and she threw him a wary look. "You're not allowed to start calling me 'Yuff,' okay? I'll disown you."

"Understood," he said, but he looked more amused than properly intimidated.

Back at the inn, Yuffie sat with the others and joined in their chatter while they ate. She didn't know if she was really doing that good a job at hiding it or if they were being sensitive, but neither Jessie nor Wedge asked what she'd been up to so early in the morning.

For some reason it made her think of Aeris. She heard stuff from the Planet _all the time_ , but she hardly ever let on about it. She even came off as cheerful and optimistic most of the time.

She'd been that way at Yuffie's birthday party. Excited to show her the house in Kalm, teasing her, telling her about the pranks she'd pull on their landlady. It was part of why Yuffie hadn't talked to her, then, about her own misgivings. If something was really wrong, if the Planet was in trouble, Aeris would know. And then Tifa would know and they'd all know.

Aeris wouldn't keep that to herself, right?

They left Costa del Sol shortly after breakfast, and Yuffie reluctantly boarded the Highwind with the others. But, though she wouldn't have trusted her stomach with any food, it kept quiet enough that she managed to stay on the bridge with the others. They passed over the peaks of the Corel mountain range, and then those of Nibel. They landed in the valley north of Nibelheim, and Yuffie was glad they could skip out on _that_ depressing excuse for a town.

She did wonder if Vincent had stopped by on his world tour though. Hopefully he hadn't stayed long.

...nope, no way was she suggesting they go and check his coffin to make sure he hadn't climbed back in. If he wanted to go and sleep away his life in a gross basement, that was _his_ problem. Yuffie wasn't responsible for his terrible ideas.

She remembered the Nibel mountains as a long and arduous climb, but from the valley, it was only a few hours' hike up to the reactor-- or what was left of it.

They had to pass through the same cave to reach it, and a large piece of debris had landed just outside the exit, mere feet from blocking it completely. It narrowed the gap enough that Barret had to edge his way through, his back brushing against the dented Shinra logo. Beyond, the spot where the reactor had stood was now a jumble of burst pipes, brick, and metal plating.

"Damn," said Yuffie. "They really did a number on this thing."

"That's my handiwork, y'know," said Jessie, hands on her hips. "Kinda wish I'd been here to see it in action. Makes a girl proud."

"So, what do you think the odds are the Huge Materia got destroyed, too?" Yuffie wondered.

Jessie scratched her head. "From what you heard, the Shinra seemed to think it was a possibility, right? I've never heard of materia being destroyed, but maybe, if the explosion reacted with the Mako... I don't really know."

"I guess that'd be hard to test, huh?"

"Mm, yeah. We're not really about _using_ Mako, especially not like that. Anyway, we shouldn't need to _destroy_ the stuff. We just need to keep it out of Shinra's hands."

"I know," said Yuffie, "but I was thinking... If the Huge Materia can be destroyed, maybe the Black Materia can be, too."

All three of them looked at her for that, and then Barret let out a breath. "It's a nice thought," he said, "but even if we don't find it here, it's gonna be hard to prove it's 'cause it got destroyed. Coulda gotten blown straight off the mountain."

Yuffie threw a glance towards the edge. If it had gone over, there was almost no way they'd find it. Even the _established_ path through these mountains was pretty maze-like.

"Do we know where the Huge Materia _would_ 've been, before the explosion?" asked Wedge.

"Not exactly," said Jessie. "This was the oldest reactor in service, built more than thirty years ago. Even Reeve wasn't too familiar with its design, and Reno said he'd never been here."

"I wonder if Vincent would've known," Wedge reflected.

Jessie shook her head. "Somebody's gonna have to get that guy a phone the next time we can pin him down, but for now we'll just have to take our best guess. I figure, since all the equipment for Mako condensation was there already, it couldn't have been too far from that room with all the pods."

Yuffie made a face. "Ugh, that place was so creepy."

"Well, now it should be less creepy," Jessie offered. "Mostly just a mess."

"Kinda makes you wish we'd known about this Huge Materia stuff before Tifa blew it up," said Barret. "But I guess there's no use complainin' about it. Let's get to work."

"Everyone be careful," Jessie warned. "It's only been a few weeks, so there's probably still stagnant Mako somewhere beneath all that. Not to mention the pit that held it."

Barret nodded in agreement. "Gotta watch our step here."

They split up as they left the cave exit; Jessie went with Barret, so Yuffie stuck close to Wedge. She figured he could use someone making sure he didn't trip over something and hurt himself. Except for that time they'd taken over the TV station, she hadn't seen much of him in action. She'd always thought of him as more of a home-base kind of guy.

"So," said Wedge as he helped her lift aside a fragment of railing, "is this anything like how it was when you were going after Sephiroth?"

"Huh? What, picking through a pile of junk?"

"No, I mean... Travelling around the world. Being there when things happen."

So, maybe he didn't really _enjoy_ being the home-base guy, Yuffie reflected. "Uh... I guess, sort of," she said. "We didn't have the Highwind then, so there was a lot more road time. Coming through here was kind of a big deal. It was rough on Tifa." At that memory, something else occurred to her that she should've thought of sooner. Before they'd come here... "Um, how was Barret, at Corel?"

Wedge caught her eye, and thought about it for a moment. "Well... It was obvious he had a lot on his mind, about things that happened in the past, but he didn't let it get in the way of the mission. I think Jessie helped him keep his spirits up, too."

"Yeah..." Yuffie glanced over at them. Jessie had stuck by Barret when they'd come through Corel before, too, even after they dropped the fake dating.

"Don't worry," said Wedge. "They told me yesterday."

"Oh." Yuffie shook her head. "I wasn't gonna bring it up. I don't really--"

A piercing roar interrupted her. Yuffie ducked instinctively.

"Jessie!" Barret shouted, and Yuffie looked up in time to see him tackle Jessie aside as a stream of fire struck. They landed behind a piece of piping, but the dragon's path carried it over them, and the cover was no good anymore. Barret started to yell before Yuffie could get her spell off.

Ice struck the dragon in the chest, interrupting its fire and throwing off its flight. Its wing clipped the nearby spire, and it banked away.

A glance at Wedge told her he had his rifle in hand. "Find cover and keep it distracted!" she told him. Then she sprinted as quickly as she could over the debris field towards Barret and Jessie.

The dragon had already circled around for another pass.

"Incoming flashbang!" Jessie shouted from out of sight. Yuffie clapped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.

The blast was loud enough even through her hands that it left her ears ringing, but her vision was clear when she opened her eyes. The dragon's vision? It roared, beating its wings wildly to pull itself well clear of crashing into anything, and flew off.

Yuffie scrambled on past the pipe.

"He was shielding me," said Jessie at the sight of her. She knelt beside Barret, who was only now trying to push himself up, his face contorted in a grimace. Tendrils of smoke curled off the back of his jacket.

"Hey, sit still a sec," Yuffie said, dropping down beside them. "I've got you."

She called up her healing magic. Leviathan's power washed over and soothed the burns, and Barret's expression eased.

"Did you see its wing?" Jessie asked her, throwing a glance over the pipe in search of the dragon. "I think this is the same one we ran into before."

"The asshole that almost killed me?" said Yuffie. Her shuriken had taken a fair cut out of that dragon's wing, and it had nearly knocked her clean off the mountain in retaliation. If Nanaki hadn't caught her, she wasn't sure she would've even had time for her life to flash before her eyes.

She realized her heart was racing, and she tried to swallow her fear. This was a way bigger arena; it'd have a harder time throwing her to her death here.

Somehow that wasn't comforting.

"You guys okay?" It was Wedge, picking his way around to join them.

"Yeah," said Barret. He pushed himself to his feet and adjusted his damaged jacket as he looked to the sky. "Don't expect that thing to stay away long enough for us to finish up here, though. Gonna have to do somethin' about it."

"Do you really think we can handle _that_?" Wedge asked.

"Sure," Barret answered easily. "Just gotta find some better cover."

"That metal plate by the cave is plenty big enough," Jessie proposed, "if we could move it out a little more. Plus that gives us the cave to retreat to."

Barret nodded, and the four of them hurried back to the cave entrance. Barret and Wedge took either end of the piece of metal and repositioned it a short distance from the cave, allowing them all the space to stand behind it, the mountain at their backs.

They peered around it in the direction the dragon had gone. The others held their guns ready in their hands, and Yuffie unslung her shuriken from her back. This time...

"How long do you think before it...?" Wedge began, but trailed off as the dragon came into view around the side of the mountain.

It didn't seem to see them at first, and instead alighted on the spire on the opposite side of the ruined reactor. It crawled to a cleft in the rock, disappearing partly from view.

"Y'think it lives up there?" said Barret in a low whisper. "Would explain us runnin' into it again."

"I wonder..." Jessie murmured.

"What're you thinkin,' Jess?"

"Well, they say dragons like to hoard shiny things, right? And it hangs out around these ruins. I wonder if it could've done our work for us."

Yuffie glanced at her. "You think it might've found the Huge Materia?"

"Maybe," said Jessie. "If we can get it out of the way, it'd sure be easier checking out that spire than combing through all this mess."

"Better get its attention then," Barret decided. "Y'all ready?"

When they all nodded, Barret opened fire on the dragon. It roared in outrage and turned. Another stream of fire shot from its mouth, but they all ducked behind the metal plate. Yuffie could feel the heat radiating from it, but it kept the dragon's breath from reaching them.

The flames let up for a second, resumed, and then stopped again. Heavy footsteps adjusted its position on the spire, and Yuffie risked a peek around their cover in time to see it launch into the air. It flew towards them and blasted more fire at their position, but the slope was too close at their backs, and it had to bank away without getting a clear shot at them.

Barret fired again at its retreating back, and Wedge joined in. Yuffie grimaced at the gunfire, loud in her ears, and thought she wouldn't have minded if the flashbang had deafened her a little longer.

Amidst the hail of bullets, the dragon didn't go far, but landed atop the debris and folded its wings to protect the delicate membranes. By contrast, its scales were like armor. Not that bullets bounced off exactly, but its skin was so tough they didn't go deep.

The dragon slammed its tail into the broken-off door of one of those pods, launching it towards them. It collided with their shield, knocking it back slightly. If it kept that up, the dragon could force a retreat.

Yuffie retaliated with another ice spell. This time she managed to encase its neck, and when the ice shattered, the dragon staggered back several steps.

"The Mako pit!" Jessie exclaimed suddenly. "We should trap it in the Mako pit."

"And, uh, how exactly are we gonna get it in there?" Barret asked her, ducking back behind the shield as the dragon hurled another piece of debris their way. It smashed against the plate, putting it an unsteady angle, and Barret put his shoulder to it to push it back into place. "If it lives here," he went on, "it's gotta know there's a pit."

"Well..." Jessie said uncertainly.

"We blind it again," Wedge interjected. "If it doesn't want to fly while we're shooting at it, and it can't _see_ where the pit is, then it could work, right?"

Jessie nodded, already reaching for another grenade on her belt. "Yuffie, you ready with more magic? It's not too far from where the pit is, we just need to force it to the right."

"Got it," said Yuffie.

Jessie tossed the flashbang over their cover, and they all braced themselves. As the boom faded, the dragon went on screeching at the assault on its senses. It smashed debris wildly, some of it still managing to strike their shield.

Yuffie opened her eyes and prepared to cast however many ice spells it took to force the dragon into the pit. She took a glance beyond their cover, taking aim. She focused, starting to bring the spell together, but she couldn't help thinking that it would be so much easier if instead of ice--

A deluge of water slammed against the dragon's right flank. The dragon staggered several steps closer to the pit, but startled by her own magic, Yuffie lost focus, and the flow subsided to a trickle. Hurriedly she tried to recapture the feeling, but it had slipped away again, like the week before on the riverbank.

"Yuffie, was that you?" said Jessie. All three of them were staring at her.

"Uh, yeah, I didn't mean to do that," she said. "But lemme try again."

The dragon was regaining its footing, near enough to the pit that it sent a few bricks tumbling over the edge. They struck the walls of the pit as they fell, the sound echoing loudly, but the dragon couldn't hear them.

Yuffie concentrated, but this time it was just another ice spell. One of the dragon's feet went down into the pit, and as it flailed, she quickly followed up with a second spell. The impact of the ice against its side forced it too far to recover, and it fell. The dragon landed at the bottom of the pit with a heavy splash, but its cry of pain was quickly extinguished as more debris collapsed on top of it.

It took a minute for everything to settle, and then there was quiet. Barret ventured out from behind the metal plate.

"Didn't think fallin' in Mako was gonna kill it," he said uncertainly.

Jessie stepped out after him, and Yuffie and Wedge followed. They cautiously approached the edge of the pit.

Far below, the dragon lay motionless in the residual Mako, no more than a few feet deep. Loose bricks, cables, and one large pipe had fallen atop it. As they stared down, a few of those bricks shifted and slid off of it into the Mako below, disturbed by its breathing. Not dead.

"I think it's just unconscious," Jessie reasoned, "but who knows for how long. The pit's too narrow for it to fly right out, but I'm sure it'll find a way to climb out eventually, once it wakes up."

Barret nodded and lifted his gaze to the spire. "Let's take advantage of our window while we can."

"Guess that means me," said Yuffie. "I don't know about Wedge, but you two are terrible climbers."

"What?" said Barret. "Would a terrible climber've made it up Gaea's Cliff? 'sides, I've got two hands now."

"Then you can use 'em to gimme a boost."

Barret huffed, but he didn't argue, and they picked their way over to the base of the spire. Barret's help _did_ get her to a decent handhold, and Yuffie started up. Calling him a terrible climber was probably unfair, since this didn't really compare to Gaea's Cliff; anything was an easier climb than _that_.

Yuffie found her way up into the cleft in the rock, reaching a place where she could stand.

There was definitely a hoard, though most of it was not exactly what Yuffie would call treasure. Colorful but worthless rocks, the bones of other monsters, a collection of gears from inside the reactor, and a solitary Shinra military helmet.

Nestled at the center, though, was a large chunk of blue crystal.

Prepared this time for what it would feel like, Yuffie put her hand on it. Again the jumble of thoughts and words. Actually, she realized, it reminded her of those weird lights up in the City of the Ancients, the ones that seemed to take the unheard whispers all around her and amplify them into a rush of words she couldn't pick apart.

"Find anything?" Jessie called up from below.

"Yeah!" Yuffie called back. "I'm gonna drop it down to you guys!"

Part of her balked at the idea of just chucking it over the edge, but it had already survived the reactor's explosion. If _that_ hadn't so much as put a scratch on it, there wasn't much _she_ could do to damage it.

How _did_ you destroy materia then? Were they stuck with the Black Materia forever?

Yuffie followed the Huge Materia back down from the spire, letting herself drop once she was near enough to the bottom. Jessie had already tucked the huge crystal away in her bag, and she adjusted the strap on her shoulder.

"Do you think..." Yuffie began uncertainly. "Do you think we should get Bugenhagen to have a look at one of these things? You know... while he still can?"

Barret exchanged glances with Jessie. "Well," he said, "ain't exactly a bad idea..."

"But we should check in with Nanaki first," Jessie added. "We should give him a heads up that we're coming, anyway."

"I don't think he'll mind," Yuffie declared, determined not to depress herself. "I bet he could use some real company. I mean, the last person he saw was _Vinny_." She made a face, and Barret chuckled.

"I guess doom and gloom isn't exactly what Nanaki needs right now," Jessie conceded. "We'll see if we can't cheer him up a little."

"Yeah," said Yuffie.

And of course she wanted to. Of course that was a sincere part of why she'd suggested it.

But it had been her second thought, not her first. She wanted someone to give her answers. Maybe that someone would be Aeris, and maybe not. If it was coming from Leviathan... Well, when it came to Wutai, Nanaki had always understood that better. She wanted him to do that thing where he was weirdly insightful about what was bothering her.

Yuffie wanted _him_ to be there for _her_ , which was backwards, and selfish, like people said she was. She was going to try not to be, when they got there. Maybe they could help each other. Quid pro quo? But that seemed wrong, too.

Before she followed the others back into the cave, Yuffie glanced back at the ruined reactor. That thing had sucked the whole mountain dry. How long before there was any life here again besides that dragon and the mutated monsters it fed on? How was the land supposed to come back from this? Where was that life supposed to come from?

Rivers feeding the ocean. She almost had it.


	6. Chapter 6

Nanaki didn't come to meet them when they arrived, and the gatekeeper's expression was somber as he welcomed them in.

"Nanaki's with Bugenhagen," he said. "He hasn't left his side in days."

"I take it he ain't doin' too well," Barret said grimly.

Ira shook his head. "We're all worried... I think it may not be much longer now."

The others were nodding solemnly. Yuffie lifted her gaze towards the observatory, where Bugenhagen lived. Night had fallen, but its lights glowed in the darkness. Yuffie didn't wait for the others, but walked on past Ira and started up the steps.

Cosmo Canyon had a certain steadiness to it, a reliability, like Nanaki himself. It had been here a long time, and though Yuffie wasn't sure if Bugenhagen had always lived here, she knew he'd made it home for a long time, too. Maybe forty or fifty years, since Nanaki was a cub. Long enough to have been friends with his parents, and long enough, too, that Nanaki probably felt closer to him than to the memories of his parents.

Yuffie wasn't sure what that was like, exactly. Her mother had died more than ten years ago, and Godo had pulled away from her, and no one had taken their place until Barret. She'd seen him injured, but it was hard to imagine him on a sickbed.

Bugenhagen's bedroom was on the mid-level of the observatory, just below the telescope. All those wrinkles on his face had always made him look ancient, but lying in bed now, he looked so much smaller than Yuffie remembered. He barely seemed to make a lump in the blankets.

Nanaki lay on the floor beside the bed, and he looked up as Yuffie reached the top of the ladder. He glanced at Bugenhagen, then back at her, and shook his head slightly. Yuffie put a finger to her lips, tilting her head in question, and he nodded.

She climbed back down to the room below, and the others entered the observatory as Nanaki came down to join her.

"Grandfather is sleeping," Nanaki explained softly. "I'm afraid you won't be able to speak with him now."

"That's all right," said Barret. "How you holdin' up? Anythin' we can do for you while we're here?"

Nanaki shook his head. "I couldn't say."

"Have you eaten?" Wedge asked. "Times like this, it's easy to forget."

"No... No, I don't think I have, in a while."

"Then we'll go down to the pub and fetch you something. We can all eat together."

"All right," said Nanaki. "Thank you."

The others started for the door. Jessie looked back. "Yuffie, you coming?"

Yuffie hesitated, then shook her head. "No. Just grab me whatever, okay? I don't really care."

Jessie nodded, but she stepped back to pull off her pack and hand it to Yuffie. "You hang onto this then, so I don't have to lug that thing all over the place."

"Okay."

The others left, and there was silence save for the faint hum of machinery. They were surrounded by it, from the common kitchen appliances nearby to the planetarium in the room next door and the telescope overhead. She knew it wasn't powered by Mako, but the sound still bugged her. Or, maybe it was just the absence of any other sounds. She thought she should've been saying something, but she was drawing a blank.

"The Huge Materia?" Nanaki asked finally, nodding to Jessie's bag.

"Yeah," Yuffie answered. She set the bag down on the kitchen table, drew out the Nibel Huge Materia, and set it down, not wanting to hold it in her hands. "We're three for three now. Zack called on the way over. The battle at Fort Condor's over."

"Are he and Cloud all right?"

She nodded. "Yeah, they're okay. I mean, Zack sounded kind of weird, but I guess he's just tired."

"I expect it wasn't an easy battle," said Nanaki.

"Maybe. I've never really fought in one like that, you know? They happened all the time when I was a kid, but I just heard about them."

Nanaki was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I have some idea what you mean. The battle that claimed my parents... I was far too young to join it. I sheltered with Grandfather, and I heard tales of their bravery, afterwards. I used to think that I should have liked to see that bravery for myself, but now..." He shook his head.

"I'm really sorry," Yuffie blurted. "About Bugenhagen. He's your whole family, and... it's not fair."

Nanaki said nothing. He padded over to her and bumped his head against her thigh. Yuffie dropped to a crouch and put her arms around his neck, her fingers in his mane. His head rested on her shoulder.

It occurred to her again, this was going to happen to him a lot. The years would go by, and the elders would get older, and AVALANCHE would get older, and even the kids in the canyon now would grow up and grow old. Nanaki would be here for so long that nobody would be able to imagine the canyon without him, but it wouldn't be like that for him.

Yuffie held him a little tighter.

"I think I called you insensitive once," Nanaki said softly. "I may owe you an apology."

Yuffie shook her head and drew back. "No, it's fine. I thought I'd come here and cheer you up or something, but that's not actually my strong suit."

"But, I _am_ glad you came," he said. "The people of this canyon, they've known me for many years. And that's a comfort. But many of them still see me as the child I was. You are... my friends. My peers, I suppose."

"You're a lot older than me," Yuffie pointed out.

"In years, yes. I think we are at a similar place in life. Learning to stand on our own."

Normally, Yuffie would've liked the sound of that. "You're not on your own," she said. "Okay?"

"...I know," he said. "Thank you."

The others returned, and the five of them sat down at the table and ate dinner together. They didn't talk about Bugenhagen, but about anything else. Kalm, Midgar, Marlene, Tifa. Their recent mission. Yuffie told him about their run-in with the same dragon he'd saved her from, and Wedge asked questions and got them reminiscing about their journey to defeat Sephiroth.

Yuffie wasn't sure if he was cheered--she wasn't sure if he could be--but maybe for an hour or two, they helped him to forget the impending tragedy.

Afterwards, Nanaki returned to Bugenhagen's room, and he encouraged the rest of them to retire to the inn. Yuffie wasn't sure about leaving him, but it'd been a long day, and she needed the bath.

She settled in the tub, warm water enveloping her. Cosmo Canyon was so dry, it had to be well water, she thought, drawn up from deep in the earth. She wondered how often it rained here.

It wasn't like Wutai at all, but Yuffie was actually growing to like the place a little. Maybe it was just the complete absence of Shinra, so unlike any other place she'd been to. Or maybe it was that she'd made enough memories here for the place to endear itself to her, even if it was boring and full of nerds.

After she'd dried off and dressed, instead of turning in, she headed down to Nanaki's room.

It was in a weird place, through the pub and beneath the inn. But maybe the pub hadn't always been a pub and the inn hadn't always been an inn. Maybe once all these caves had belonged to Nanaki's people. And then they'd been empty, for a while, and then new people had made them home.

Nanaki wasn't there, of course. Just a dark, empty room, its walls hung with fabrics and its floor carpeted in cushions and rugs. On the bench on the far side was a pile of letters. AVALANCHE had been writing him, too, she guessed. Cosmo Canyon had a phone, but it wasn't so easy for him to use.

Yuffie had been in here just once before, the night they'd come back from Gongaga. She'd been exhausted, and too much had happened for her to think about it, but she couldn't _not_ think about it, and when Nanaki had invited her, she hadn't had the energy to question it. They hadn't really talked much. He'd left her with her thoughts, and that was the night she'd made up her mind to stay with AVALANCHE. Maybe even join them.

When she'd reflected on it before, Yuffie had always figured he'd noticed she had a lot on her mind and wanted to give her a quiet space to unwind. If she'd gone back to the room with Tifa and Aeris, well, she would've just been thinking about them, and how terrified she'd been when Sephiroth had almost killed them back in Gongaga. Nanaki was a lot better at picking up on that stuff than she was.

And that was why it only now occurred to her, months later, that maybe he just hadn't wanted to be alone. Cosmo Canyon had been attacked that same day. It must've been hard on him.

Hours ago, she'd thought maybe she could talk to him about what was bugging her now, but having seen him, she understood that wouldn't be happening. Sure, he'd listen if she told him, but he wouldn't be able to turn his mind to it. He couldn't deal with her stuff on top of his own. Not this time.

Yuffie chewed on her lip, turned around, and headed back up to the observatory.

The scene wasn't much different from when she'd entered before, just dimmer. Nanaki had turned out the lights, and instead it was mostly moonlight coming in through the windows. He lifted his head to look at her.

"Mind if I sleep on the couch?" she asked quietly.

He kept looking at her, and then slowly blinked his eye. "Not at all."

Yuffie settled on the couch on her back, and closed her eyes. She could hear Bugenhagen breathing, long slow breaths that should have come a little easier than they did. It wasn't an easy sound to fall asleep to, and when she did sleep, it was never deep enough to dream.

Barret and the others returned in the morning with breakfast. This time, Bugenhagen was awake, so they ate crowded together in his bedroom. Yuffie and Wedge sat cross-legged on the floor while Barret and Jessie sat on the little sofa, and of course Nanaki never left his grandfather's bedside.

"So many visitors for one old man," Bugenhagen remarked with his usual levity, but his chuckle turned into a cough.

He didn't seem to want anybody fussing over him, so they tried not to. Instead they told him why they'd come: to seek his insights about the Huge Materia. After they'd eaten, and Bugenhagen told them he was finished, even though he'd hardly touched his food, Jessie brought the Nibel materia up from downstairs and placed it carefully in his hands.

Bugenhagen held it, shaking his head wonderingly. "One almost feels as though one could listen to it," he said, "like to the voice of the Planet itself. But the voices in this materia have been torn out of that living flow that is the Planet's Lifestream. It is, by comparison, inert."

"Does that mean we can't use it for anything?" asked Wedge.

Bugenhagen frowned thoughtfully. "This Huge Materia... it's very crude. I don't believe the Shinra really knew what they were making. They kept on condensing their Mako, without any guiding principal behind the act but power. You might be able to draw some magic out of it... but I can't imagine it would be a particularly efficient way of wielding magic."

"I'm guessing we can't easily get rid of it though," said Jessie. "Like the Black Materia. This one survived being at the heart of a reactor explosion, and there's not a scratch on it."

"Hmm... Perhaps. This Huge Materia does have its differences from the Black Materia, though. The Black Materia was made by the Planet, and its power has a singular focus. Elegant, if also terrible. Not this cobbled-together thing."

"Do _you_ know of any way to get rid of materia?" Yuffie asked him, and when Jessie threw her a quizzical look, she added, "Well, if it's no good to us, then it's just another weapon for the Shinra, right?"

"I don't," Bugenhagen admitted, "but that doesn't mean there isn't a way. Nothing in this universe is eternal, after all." He tried to hand the Huge Materia back to Jessie, but his frail hands couldn't manage to lift the heavy crystal. She quickly took it from him. "Perhaps the Planet knows a way," he added.

"Could be," said Barret, and he caught Yuffie's eye across the room. "Could be it's been tryin' to tell us somethin' about that, but we haven't been quite ready for the conversation."

"Nanaki tells me Aeris has been teaching you all to listen, to hear the Planet as it was meant to be heard. Not like me and my machines."

"What's wrong with you and your machines?" Jessie asked. "If some of us need the world's largest hearing aid, I don't think the Planet's going to mind."

Bugenhagen chuckled quietly. "You're right, of course. I've always felt that... it's the ideal culmination of man's ambitions, to use technology to deepen our understanding of the Planet. It's a funny thing, though. Nanaki says he hasn't had the machine on, but I swear I hear it sometimes anyway. I wonder what it's trying to say to me..."

"You'll figure it out, Grandfather," said Nanaki. "You have plenty of time."

He didn't. They all knew he didn't. Even Nanaki had to know that.

"Anyhow," said Bugenhagen, "you mustn't linger on my account. I know you young people always have somewhere to rush off to. If I were a few years younger, I might like to come with you."

"Are you sure?" Jessie asked, looking between him and Nanaki. "I mean, now that we've got the Huge Materia, we've sort of thwarted Shinra's plans for the moment."

"Yeah, we probably got some time before the next crisis," Barret agreed.

But Nanaki shook his head. "Grandfather is right. You may have stalled one of Rufus's plans, but I doubt he'll give up on the notion of attacking Midgar. Besides, don't you want to get home to Marlene?"

Barret scratched his head. "Well..."

"Go on," Nanaki said. "Take the Huge Materia to Aeris. See what more you can learn."

"Awright," Barret conceded. "But we'll be back again when we can."

"I'm staying," Yuffie said abruptly. She said it without thinking, but the words out of her own mouth didn't surprise her.

"Yuffie," Nanaki began, "there's no need to--"

"I'm staying," she repeated. "Besides, we oughtta have the rest of the nerds here take a look at the Huge Materia, too. We can't expect Aeris to know everything."

"You got a feelin' about it?" Barret asked her.

"...yeah," she said. "I guess so." She didn't think this feeling had much to do with Leviathan, or the Planet, but she had to listen to her gut all the same.

Barret nodded. "Awright. We'll leave the Nibel one here. Got two others Aeris can take a look at."

They said their goodbyes, and Yuffie could tell Jessie had to fight down the impulse to hug her. She did give Nanaki a quick pat on the head, which he didn't shake off like usual. Barret very carefully shook Bugenhagen's hand, and then he and Jessie and Wedge were gone, and the bedroom was quiet.

Bugenhagen broke the silence. "You'll want to take that on down to Hargo first," he said. "You know where to find him?"

"Uh... Yeah. I think so."

He always smelled like old books, that guy. It didn't take her long to locate him tucked away in a little alcove, half-buried in them. He didn't look up until she'd set the Huge Materia down atop the book he had his nose in.

"Ah?" he said. He adjusted his glasses and looked up at her. "What's this you've brought me?"

"It's called Huge Materia," she said. "The Shinra made it... It's supposed to be really powerful, but we don't know how to use it, or how to get rid of it. We already showed it to Bugenhagen, but there wasn't a lot he could tell us. I don't know. I thought... You know some stuff, too, right?"

Hargo smiled at her. "I like to think so," he said. "I feel I spend all my time now trying to write down what I do know, while I still remember it. That way, when _my_ time comes to return to the Planet..." He trailed off, shaking his head.

"So, can you help?" Yuffie prompted.

"Hmm..." Hargo laid a hand on the Huge Materia. "I wonder if this materia would be to the Ancients like my own disorganized notes are to the others here. Full of snatches of knowledge, but hard to make sense of."

Yuffie frowned. "Are you saying materia was like books to the Ancients?" People were always saying it was full of their wisdom; was that how they'd stored things for others to know?

But Hargo shook his head. "No, I expect they had books of their own. They had their own writing, at least. Materia is something different. Well, I suppose I can't tell you anything for certain--the accounts I've studied are apocryphal--but they suggest that materia came about _after_ the decline of the Cetra. The Planet began making it of its own accord, in an effort to build a similar connection with humans."

"The Planet made it for _us_?" Yuffie said in surprise, but it made sense when she thought about it. Why would the Ancients have needed it? They called up magic directly from the Planet itself, because they could talk to it. Aeris herself had stopped using materia after she'd left Midgar, once the Planet's voice got clear enough.

"Again, it's only a theory," said Hargo. "I'm not sure we'll ever know the truth of it."

"Well, the Planet would know. I mean... unless planets forget things."

Hargo tapped the Huge Materia with a finger. "Everything in this crystal was once a part of the Planet's memory, wasn't it? Who's to say what it's lost, over time--between its own intentional sacrifices, and the things the Shinra have pulled out of it and destroyed forever?"

"Forever?" Yuffie repeated. She chewed on her lip, staring into the Huge Materia. Was that how it was?

"That doesn't mean it can't be replaced," Hargo went on gently. "That was once the duty of the Cetra, to cultivate the Planet and raise new Spirit Energy. Shinra has caused a hemorrhage these past decades, but now that you and your friends have stymied that, I think the Planet may have a chance for recovery."

"Were you pessimistic about it, too? Like Bugenhagen?"

Hargo's face fell. "Yes," he said, "I suppose we all became a little resigned to it... But you've given us hope. You've given Bugenhagen hope."

"But..." Yuffie faltered. "He's dying."

"...maybe so. But because of you, he can die having seen Nanaki home safe again. I think he wanted to hold on long enough for that. And, not only that, but now he has hope that there will be a future for those he leaves behind."

Yuffie nodded slowly, but she wasn't sure what to say.

"I'll have a look through my books," Hargo offered, "and see if there isn't anything more I can dig up for you. I may not have much on manufactured materia, but perhaps what we know about naturally born materia may be of some help."

"Thanks," said Yuffie. She left the Huge Materia with him and wandered outside.

It was mid-morning. One of the canyon's windmills turned slowly at the edge of her vision, and some kid's voice carried up from the bonfire below, loudly counting down. Other kids scurried off, looking for hiding places. Two of them hurried up the steps hand-in-hand--Yuffie recognized them as the pair from Nibelheim, and the brother put a finger to his lips as they passed her and disappeared into the room behind her.

They'd come a long way since the last time she'd seen them, if they were playing with the other kids now. Recovering, like everyone had hoped for them. Their parents had died in the massacre, and it wasn't hard to imagine that they'd gone out on the desperate hope that their children would survive them.

Yuffie's mother had died in battle five years into a war that would go on another four, and one they would ultimately lose. So, what had _she_ gone out believing? Had she been hopeful for Yuffie's future? Had she expected Yuffie to grow up in a victorious Wutai?

It was hard to imagine what that would've looked like. It would've been a lot different from the Wutai Yuffie was trying to build now. Losing the war had changed too much for them to go back.

Cosmo Canyon would have to change, a little, once Bugenhagen was gone.

Yuffie returned to the observatory, but she didn't go into the bedroom this time. She didn't want to intrude on them, but she didn't want to be far either.

She poked through the kitchen, and wandered into the planetarium next door, but she didn't know how to turn it on. A room full of machines she didn't know how to use. She wondered if this was the future, like Bugenhagen said. Technology that helped them to understand the Planet, instead of ignore it.

Would they bring stuff like this to Wutai, too? Jessie had rambled in one of her letters about hydroelectric dams. Yuffie hadn't understood most of it, except that it was something that would work well with Wutai's many rivers.

Yuffie tried to imagine her home all lit up with electric lights. Television and radio and telephone to make it easier to know what was going on not just in the rest of the world but between the different towns up and down the continent. Yuffie had travelled to them that autumn by chocobo, but maybe one day there'd be trains.

What would the gods make of that? What would her people make of it? Back before the war, they hadn't really known Mako reactors were so bad for the Planet; they just hadn't trusted the way Shinra presented itself. And when they'd made their stand, a lot of them had made it against the technological progress that Shinra represented, as much as against Shinra itself.

But the way people did things here... that was different.

When she returned to the kitchen, Yuffie could hear Nanaki's voice speaking steadily up above. It took her a minute to realize he was reading something aloud. She went and sat at the base of the ladder, near enough to make it out.

It sounded boring. Some history book about the canyon in decades past. A biography maybe. But, she could see how it might be soothing to listen to.

The sound beneath it wasn't. Bugenhagen's breathing had grown more labored. He wheezed faintly as he inhaled. Yuffie wrapped her arms around her knees and tried to focus on Nanaki's voice instead.

She almost thought she felt it, before she heard it. The pause. Nanaki's soft, indrawn breath. His voice, sounding very small, saying,

"Grandfather?"

Silence followed. The worst kind of silence.

Then, Nanaki's howl pierced through it.

Her first instinct was to bolt. All those funerals during the war, someone standing with their hand on her shoulder, ostensibly to comfort her but really to make her stay. To make her behave and look the part of a noble Kisaragi. As if a little kid could be a proper stand-in for a father away on the front lines.

And then she thought of her mother. Aeris had said, she didn't know for sure if humans could stick around the way Cetra could, resisting the peaceful oblivion of the Lifestream. She didn't know if they could linger, if they could be heard, maybe sometimes in dreams.

_Wait_ , she thought. _Don't leave him just yet._

Yuffie had no idea if anyone was listening to her, and if she couldn't even make out her own mother's voice, she sure wasn't going to hear anything from Bugenhagen.

She waited until Nanaki's howls had subsided, and then she ventured back upstairs.

Nanaki's head and forepaws lay across the bed, his eye closed, his nose just touching Bugenhagen's hand. He didn't look at her, or even move.

Yuffie couldn't remember the moment she'd been told her mother was dead. It was a blur. So she imagined what she said now... it wouldn't matter, in the long run. Nanaki would forget.

"I'll go get Elder Hargo," she offered, even though everyone had probably heard already. "I'm sure he knows... how to handle everything."

The next few hours were hard, for everyone. The entire community was in mourning. Bugenhagen had meant something to every single one of them.

Yuffie stuck close to Nanaki, though. When Hargo came with others and coaxed him from the bedroom, and when they watched Bugenhagen's body being carried away, to be prepared for burial. Nanaki at last left the observatory, but he moved sluggishly, like his body had become heavy. He seemed to give up on keeping up with them.

"You wanna go back to your room?" Yuffie suggested.

Nanaki made a noise in the back of his throat, and after a few moments, he pushed himself forward again. The few people they passed quietly offered their condolences, and a group was gathered around the bonfire, but no one seemed bothered or surprised when Nanaki ignored them.

When they reached his room, he stopped in the middle of it and stood there, staring blankly at the far wall.

"...I can go, if you want," said Yuffie.

But he shook his head, and at last lay down on a rug. Yuffie sat down cross-legged on a cushion a little ways away.

"...does crying help?" Nanaki asked softly.

"Huh?"

"Humans cry when this happens. Does it help?"

"Oh." Yuffie frowned, trying to think. "I don't know. I guess... sometimes it feels like you're getting some of it out, you know? But mostly it's just embarrassing."

"I see."

"Does howling help?"

"I think it's... about the same."

"Well, if you want to anyway, I'll just plug my ears."

Nanaki didn't reply. He was quiet for a long time, long enough that she wondered if he'd fallen asleep. He probably hadn't been sleeping much lately.

"Grandfather told me... my duty isn't to this canyon. He said there was more for me to learn, in the world outside it."

Yuffie wasn't sure what he wanted her to say. "Well, you're not gonna get any argument from me. You know how I feel about Wutai, but there's a _lot_ going on in the world. I gotta be a part of it."

Nanaki turned his head enough to glance at her. "But... here you are."

"You're my friend. And anyway, I think I owe you one or two favors."

"You've been keeping score?"

"Not officially."

"Hm. I'm happy to consider us even, if you like."

"Sure," Yuffie decided. She thought for a moment. "And, y'know... if you _wanna_ get outta here for a while, you can head out with me in a couple days. But I get it if you wanna stay, too."

"Won't you be returning to Junon?" Nanaki asked her.

"Well, yeah," she admitted. He couldn't come back with her there; he'd stick out like a sore thumb, and that wasn't super conducive to espionage. "But we can call up Shera and get her to pick us up. I'll make my way back to Junon, and you can go... wherever."

Nanaki didn't answer right away. "I'll think about it," he said at last.

Yuffie nodded. "Yeah. No rush. I mean, now's not a great time to be thinking about anything. You want a distraction, I'll even support you reading one of those boring-ass books you've got."

Nanaki huffed. "They aren't boring."

"If you say so."

"For now... all I want is to sleep. And for things to be different when I wake."

Again, Yuffie didn't know what to say. She wished she had some kind of wisdom to offer him, but she didn't read books and she didn't listen to old people. All she knew was he felt bad, and he was going to go _on_ feeling bad for a while.

"Try an' sleep then," she managed. "I'll be here if you need anything."

He nodded. "...thank you, Yuffie."

But it seemed dumb for him to thank her, when she couldn't really do anything.

She wondered if he _would_ leave Cosmo Canyon. Maybe it would be good for him for a while, to get away from a place that Bugenhagen had been the beating heart of. There'd be no escaping his loss, not for a second. And she didn't think it was good to skip out on mourning, but it didn't have to be _constant_ either. Right?

What had Bugenhagen wanted him to learn anyway? Nanaki was already pretty smart. But... he did seem conflicted sometimes, about his place in the world. Hard not to be, considering what he was.

They'd given Bugenhagen hope about the future, so... he wanted Nanaki to have a good one. Was that it? Yuffie listened in the silence, as if she'd be able to hear an answer from him.

No. All his wisdom, it was part of the Planet now.


	7. Chapter 7

Yuffie hadn't been sleeping well lately either, and in the dark quiet of Nanaki's room, she drifted off, too.

This time she was sitting on the riverbank. Overhead, the sky held a tinge of color. Something had changed.

The bank was steep here, and Yuffie slid down it. Some of the earth came away with her, bits of brown dirt scattering into the dry riverbed. Her bare feet touched the smooth stones of the bottom, and her toes curled around them.

They felt cool, the kind of cool that came from moisture. She dropped to her knees and pried up one of the stones, and just beneath it was a trickle. A tiny thread of water winding its way downriver.

A hand came to rest on her shoulder. Yuffie looked up to find her mother crouched beside her.

"It's not enough," she said.

There were voices in the distance. Her mother never broke her gaze, but Yuffie looked up.

She woke.

The voices were coming from the pub down the hall. They filtered into her understanding, and she sat up with a start.

"...sure he knows what I'm talking about," Tseng was saying. Tseng! What was _he_ doing here?

"Have you no feeling at all?" Elder Bugah replied. "Not even an ounce of patience? I've told you, he's in mourning."

"Nanaki," Yuffie said urgently, but when she looked, he was already alert and listening.

"I was just about to wake you," Nanaki said. "They're asking Bugah about the Huge Materia."

"What?" she said. "How did they even know it was here?"

Nanaki only shook his head.

It couldn't have been anyone from the canyon, she was sure of it. They'd never betray Nanaki or their home like that, and most of them didn't know about it anyway. "Has there been anybody new hanging around?" she asked.

"No. Not since we took in the survivors from Nibelheim."

And like hell would any of _them_ have loyalty to Shinra, Yuffie thought. The information had to have gotten out some other way.

"I don't think that's what's most pressing now," said Nanaki. "Bugah won't delay them much longer. You need to hide."

"What?" Yuffie looked at him indignantly. " _Hide_?"

"From the sound of it, he's brought quite a few men with him. We can't fight them, and... I don't want them taking you prisoner."

"Well, what about _you_? You gonna volunteer to be a lab rat again?"

Nanaki's ears twitched. "I doubt that's their intent. They don't have the lab in Midgar anymore."

"But..." Yuffie faltered. "You're still part of AVALANCHE. They could take you for that just as much as me."

"But they don't know you're here."

Yuffie bit her lip, but she heard the door out into the pub opening in spite of Bugah's protests, and she nodded.

There was space beneath the bench, but if Tseng's men searched the place, they'd look there. A series of beams stretched overhead for the tapestries that hung there. Yuffie climbed onto the bench, leapt up to grab the nearest beam, and pulled herself up just as the door opened. She stilled, counting on the dim and the tapestries to obscure her from view.

Tseng stepped into the room, flanked by two uniformed soldiers.

"I'm sorry, Nanaki," said Elder Bugah from behind them. "They insisted..."

"It's all right," Nanaki said.

Tseng stopped just before Nanaki and folded his hands behind his back, all business. "I'm sure you know why we've come."

"Do I?"

"Please don't embarrass yourself by attempting to lie. We're well aware AVALANCHE came here last night with the Huge Materia collected from both Corel and Mt. Nibel."

"And they left this morning," Nanaki stated.

"Yes, but they left one of the Huge Materia behind so that your people could study it. I've come to retrieve it."

Nanaki said nothing. His tail swished.

"That materia rightfully belongs to Shinra, Inc," Tseng went on. "You would be assisting in the restoration of stolen property."

"Are you really attempting that argument with me?" Nanaki asked archly. Like they hadn't straight-up kidnapped him from his own home a couple years back.

"Very well. I have thirty men under my command. They've already begun a search of the canyon. We'll find the materia with or without your cooperation, but I imagine it will be upsetting for your people to have soldiers ransacking their homes. Especially so soon after your recent loss..."

Yuffie wanted to leap on him right then and there. Her fingers clenched, and Nanaki's tail swished again.

"There's no need for all of that," he said, his voice all strained politeness. "We'll cooperate. Please, call your men back, and I will speak to Elder Hargo. I believe it was left in his care."

"Thank you," said Tseng.

No way! Yuffie thought. They could take him! Yuffie had left most of her gear at the inn, but she had her materia on her. Those two soldiers would go down easy, and between her and Nanaki, they could take a Turk!

But... in her gut, she knew Nanaki was right. It wasn't just Tseng, and it wasn't just them either. The canyon was full of easy hostages. Even now, all Tseng would have to do was grab Bugah, and the fight would be over. Cooperating was the only way they had to protect the canyon.

And, she realized, they couldn't afford to make Shinra waste their time searching the whole place either. They didn't seem to know the Black Materia was here, but if they kept looking, they'd find it eventually. That was a worse thing for them to get their hands on than the Huge Materia. If they could power some kind of weapon with _that_...

"Oh," said Tseng. "There is one more thing. The Kisaragi girl stayed behind, too. I would appreciate it if you brought _her_ out of hiding as well."

Yuffie quietly stuck her tongue out at him. 'The Kisaragi girl'? Like she'd answer to _that_.

Nanaki shook his head. "Yuffie isn't here," he said.

"I asked you not to lie."

"I'm not. Yuffie only stayed until... until Bugenhagen passed."

"You want me to believe your friend left you immediately after the death of your grandfather?"

"I asked her to," Nanaki said. "I realized... I wanted to be alone. So, if we could settle this quickly, _I_ would appreciate it."

"Very well," said Tseng. He still sounded skeptical, but he turned for the door without pushing it. Bugah stepped out of the way, and the soldiers followed.

Nanaki paused in the doorway. He didn't glance back at her, but his ears swivelled in her direction, and his tail flicked, as if to tell her to stay out of it.

Like hell she would.

Yuffie waited until she heard them pass through the outer door into the pub, and then she dropped down from the ceiling. The cushion beneath muffled the sound. She went to the door, putting her ear to it, but Tseng and his men didn't linger. Nanaki was leading them outside.

She was about to step into the hall when she heard the pub door again and a single set of hurried footsteps approaching. She ducked back so she'd be behind the door when it opened and readied a Silence spell.

But it was the barkeeper who opened it. Yuffie relaxed and stepped out of hiding, which startled him instead.

"Oh!" he exclaimed softly. "I was sure you were back here, and then Nanaki gave me this look..."

"He wanted you to come check on me," Yuffie concluded. "Look, I'm sure he wants me to stay outta sight here until they leave, but I'm not about to let them get away with what they came for."

The barkeeper stared at her, obviously alarmed by her declaration. "There are too many of them!"

"Relax, I'm not talking about fighting 'em all. I've got a disguise that'll let me blend right in, I've just gotta get back to my room."

He shook his head. "There are still soldiers at the inn. I heard that man say he'd call off the search, but no one's gone to tell them."

"Shit," said Yuffie. "If they find my stuff, they'll know I'm still here."

She pushed past him out into the hall, and he followed anxiously.

"Isn't it worse if they see you?" he asked.

"I can handle one or two," she said. "Don't worry about it."

She opened the door a crack to scan the pub before she stepped out into it. The innkeeper and a few residents stood near the entrance looking outside, but it was clear of Shinra. Yuffie moved past them, up the stairs to the inn. Reaching her door down the hall, the room she'd never actually slept in, she could hear someone moving on the other side.

She turned the knob.

A Shinra soldier was rifling through her bag. He turned as Yuffie entered, and did an impeccably comical double-take between her face and the fake ID he'd just tossed aside.

"You're--" he began, but her Silence spell hit him before he finished his sentence.

His rifle was on his back to free up his hands for the search. Yuffie charged him, and he reached instead for the baton at his hip. He got hold of it in time, but he was clumsy, not well-trained in close combat. His whole body telegraphed his movements.

Yuffie dodged his swipe easily and kneed him in the groin.

His face contorted in pain, and she swept his legs out from under him. He went down, but he swung his baton wildly when she reached to disarm him.

Yuffie danced back, spotted her shuriken where he'd left it on the bed, and grabbed it. She swung down, trapping his wrist against the floor between two of the points. He had to let go of the baton to pull his hand free. As he started to get up, Yuffie jerked the shuriken up, bringing one of the blades dangerously close to his throat, and he froze.

"That's what I thought," she said.

She couldn't get a Sleep spell to take hold--the guy was too keyed up--so she carefully relieved him of his gun, dug some rope out of her bag, and made him tie himself to a bedpost. She almost started asking him questions, but he'd be unable to talk for a while yet, so instead she dug through his pockets until she found his ID.

"Jensen, huh?" she observed. "Good to know."

She tugged his helmet off and blindfolded him with a pillowcase, because she still had to get changed. She pulled on her stolen uniform, repacked her bag, and stepped out into the hallway.

Another soldier nearly ran into her. "Oh," he said. "They asked you to help look, too?"

Yuffie shook her head. "No, I was lookin' for you actually. They're cooperating, so the search's off. I already let Jensen know. No sign of anything here anyhow."

"Oh, good," he said in relief. "I always hate doing this sort of thing, pushing civilians around. I mean, I know they were helping criminals, but how are they really going to say no to a group like AVALANCHE?"

"Yeah, they're in a tough spot," Yuffie said, but beneath her helmet she was rolling her eyes. "Anyway, it was just you and Jensen back here, right?"

"That's right," he confirmed, and she followed him back down the hall. In the pub, she let herself fall behind, and he went on outside without her.

Yuffie stood with the locals, looking out onto the commons. It was growing dark outside, but a small knot of soldiers mingled near the bonfire, and she made out another group stationed near the gate. Tseng and his escort had passed out of sight, probably somewhere in the tunnels higher up the canyon.

"You know how they got here?" she asked the barkeep.

He gave another start and gave her a hard look. He clearly hadn't paid much attention to her approach. "I'm not sure," he admitted.

"I saw them," said a woman, one of the ones from Nibelheim. "There was a big army plane that set down in the valley."

"A Gelnika," Yuffie concluded. It was the only thing that really made sense, with how fast they'd gotten here. Even then, they must've set out the second they got the news from their spy.

She turned to face the barkeeper. "I don't think I'm gonna get a chance to talk to him, so you're gonna have to give Nanaki a message for me. The Shinra are gonna take the Huge Materia outta here on the Gelnika, but I'm going with them. I'm gonna try to get it back from them before they reach Junon."

"All on your own?"

"Yeah, well. It's kinda my thing. Make sure he lets Tifa and the others know, too."

The man hesitated, but he nodded. "I'll tell him. Be careful."

"Oh," she added, "and there's a guy tied up back in my room. You're gonna have to do something about him."

The barkeeper nodded again, and Yuffie stepped out into the commons.

It was basically the same mission she'd originally signed up for, she told herself: act as a fail-safe in case the Shinra got the Huge Materia. The only difference was, she'd be aboard the Gelnika, and not the cargo ship...

None of the soldiers stationed around the canyon seemed to be _leaving_ it just yet, so Yuffie positioned herself within earshot of the group by the gate and waited. In the deepening twilight, she spotted Nanaki easily by the light of his tail when he reappeared outside. The Huge Materia was easy to spot, too, the light of nearby torches glinting off of its surface as one of the soldiers in Tseng's escort carried it down with them.

Tseng stopped near the gate as if to go on speaking to Nanaki, but first he ordered the soldiers to take the Huge Materia on to the Gelnika. Yuffie fell into step with them, leaving before Tseng could get any sort of look at her. She resisted the urge to glance back at Nanaki as she went. She thought he was right, that they weren't after him today. He'd be okay.

For a while, like her, he'd refused the title of AVALANCHE member, and maybe the Shinra had decided he wasn't one of them any longer. He'd settled back in his homeland, as if he'd only been in it with them to defeat Sephiroth. If that was what they thought, that was okay. Yuffie knew better.

It crossed her mind to attack the soldiers on their way to the Gelnika, but there were a few too many of them for her to take out quickly, and the commotion would undoubtedly draw reinforcements. She'd have to wait for a better moment... if one was even coming.

What if she couldn't get it back? All those people in Midgar... She wouldn't have thought much of them just a few months ago, but if she could forgive her friends for letting Shinra deceive them, then those people weren't any different. They'd thrown their lot in with Reeve and AVALANCHE now, and Yuffie didn't want there to be any doubt in their minds that that was the right choice.

They were probably counting on her more than her own people, right now.

And it had been her idea to leave the Huge Materia in Cosmo Canyon, where Shinra could just come in and take it like this. If they built their bomb with it, it'd be all her fault.

They boarded the Gelnika through the open mouth of its cargo hold, which Yuffie took note of. Plenty of places to hide out in there, while being close to the exit.

The soldiers continued deeper into the ship, though, and Yuffie followed long enough to see one of them open a particular room with a key card and carry the Huge Materia inside. Another soldier posted herself outside the door, while the rest dispersed to other parts of the ship.

"Authorized personnel only," the guard barked when she noticed Yuffie lingering.

"I know," said Yuffie, "but aren't you curious?"

The guard shook her head. "Above my pay grade."

Yuffie shrugged as if letting it drop and left the corridor for now. The Gelnika took to the air less than half an hour later, and she saw Tseng make his way towards that secure room. Later.

She took the lay of the ship first, exploring wherever the real soldiers seemed to go casually. She didn't have access to the cockpit either, but everything else was fair game--not that there was much to look at. It was definitely more of a transport ship than a passenger ship--or at least, no one expected the passengers to be VIPs. She located a cramped mess and sleeping quarters, and an arms locker full of weapons she didn't care to use.

The cargo hold remained the most interesting, and she made a slow circuit of it, picking out a couple choice hiding places.

What she couldn't find was a good spot to stake out the room where they were keeping the Huge Materia. She'd noticed pipes running along the ceiling, but the guard had a clear view of the entire hallway; no way to get up into them without her seeing. Besides, the ceilings were low, which made people pay them more attention.

But at least she knew one soldier who had the right key card, if she could find him again. She didn't think he'd left the room yet.

They'd be flying overnight back to Junon, and Yuffie hoped that meant at least some of the crew would opt to sleep through it. The mess was on the way to the sleeping deck, and even though she absolutely didn't feel like eating, she staked out a spot there near the door. It tended to open whenever anyone walked past, and she kept an eye out for her guy.

It was a while before he showed, but once she saw him go by, she waited a minute, made a show of yawning, and got up to follow.

Just as she thought, he was turning in. She caught up to him inside the sleeping deck, where he stood surveying the room for an empty bunk. Yuffie yawned again, brushing past him as she did.

"Oh, sorry," she mumbled when he glanced at her, and she was already tucking his key card up her sleeve.

She continued on to an empty bunk against the wall, flopped down onto it, and turned to face the wall as she tugged her helmet off. Someone was snoring softly, which gave her a convenient excuse to pull the pillow over her head.

She didn't go to sleep. That would be stupid, right now. She just needed to kill some time, because if she was going to make a move, it had to be as close to when they reached Junon as possible, to give them the least amount of time to realize what she'd done and search her out. She had nowhere to go until they'd landed.

She was grateful for her earlier nap, though. She always had a hard time sleeping on ships, but without that she probably would've been exhausted enough to pass out anyway.

Instead she lay there listening to the sounds around her, and it gave her the space to reflect for the first time since she'd woken.

The dream had been different, this time. Why? She hadn't done anything except hang around in Cosmo Canyon, powerless to keep an old man from dying. Would anyone there have been able to explain it to her?

She thought about what Hargo had told her. Maybe locked away inside the Huge Materia was some knowledge the Planet had lost... A memory it knew it was missing. Was Leviathan trying to lead her back to it? Could it be restored?

Yuffie kept count of each soldier who entered, tallying them against the number of people aboard--closer to forty, when you counted the crew who'd stayed with the ship earlier. The hours passed late into the night, with more of the crew conking out for the trip. It must have been the early morning hours when the door opened again, and she heard what she was waiting for.

"Gods, Tseng's such a slavedriver," one man muttered. "I'm gonna get all of thirty minutes before we land, and I'm scheduled for base duty..."

"You think you're the only one? Quit complainin.'"

Yuffie waited for them to settle, then pulled her helmet back on and slipped out of bed. No one remarked on her exit, but she wished she knew how to lock them all in. That would've been a handy trick.

She wondered if what they'd said meant that Tseng was--

He was in the hallway, walking in her direction. Yuffie fought down her startle response and managed to get her feet moving. He wasn't walking towards _her_ , he was just walking. They'd pass each other like two completely legitimate Shinra employees who didn't have any concerns about the other.

Tseng passed her without a second glance, headed up towards the cockpit, and Yuffie let out a silent breath as she continued down the corridor. He hadn't recognized her.

Yuffie had had plenty of time to think about that hallway outside the secure room, and she'd realized there was exactly one small blind spot for the guard: the ladder coming down from the deck above. Because of how the ceiling was, Yuffie wouldn't be in view until she'd climbed all the way down.

She only needed a second or two unseen. Listening at the top of the ladder, she didn't hear anyone below, so Yuffie climbed part of the way down, hooked her knees over one of the rungs, and eased herself down until she could just make out the guard past the dip in the ceiling.

The guard was trying to stifle a yawn. Perfect. Yuffie's Sleep spell took hold without any trouble, and the guard slumped to the floor. Yuffie pulled herself upright and dropped down into the hallway.

She readied another spell before she used her pilfered key card to open the door, but the room beyond was empty. It reminded her of some of the things she'd seen when they'd rescued Tifa and the others from Shinra Headquarters--lab equipment, some kind of mobile research room. The Huge Materia glowed dully from within a big glass tank. Yuffie went to the controls, but it wasn't immediately obvious how to open it.

Could she smash the glass? It looked thick, but maybe with magic...

The door behind her opened.

Yuffie spun. One soldier stood in the doorway, and she could see another just behind him crouched beside the sleeping guard.

"You're not authorized to be in here."

"Huh?" said Yuffie. "Sure, I'm authorized." _Shit_ , she thought. This wasn't going to work. There were few enough who had access to this room that they probably all knew each other.

There were only two, so far. If she got past them, she might be okay.

"I think this is a Sleep spell, Cooper," said the other soldier. "She won't wake up. You don't think that person's--?"

"An impostor," finished Cooper.

He reached for his gun, and Yuffie hit them both with a Bolt spell. They flew back from the door, collapsing against the far wall of the corridor. Yuffie threw the Huge Materia one last look before she dashed out after them.

A few other soldiers had just climbed down from the upper deck, but they looked confused as they took in the scene. Yuffie turned the other way and ran.

"She's an impostor!" Cooper cried to the newcomers as he started to pick himself up, but Yuffie was through the next door before they could rally after her. She spun and cast an ice spell; it would only block the door a few extra seconds, but she needed every one of them.

She raced down the corridor to the cargo hold door, but forced herself to slow just before she entered, not expecting it to be empty. Nothing had come over the intercom system yet, so they wouldn't know to be suspicious unless she acted like it.

Yuffie stepped out onto the upper catwalk. All her hiding spots were down below, and the distance to the stairs... it stretched out too long. She walked briskly, but she'd only just reached the top of the staircase before her pursuit burst through the door behind her. She ran halfway down and leapt over the rail, dropping to the level below as bullets pinged off the metal above her.

_Shit, shit, shit!!_

"Get her!" someone shouted to the soldiers in the cargo hold. "She's an intruder!"

One of them was near enough to open fire on her, and she dove behind a nearby stack of crates. She dumped her pack and unslung her shuriken from beneath it. Peeking up from behind her cover, she took aim and threw.

One down.

But what good did that do her? Even if she could miraculously take out every soldier on board, including Tseng, they were about to land at Junon base. Her heart sank with the realization that there was no way out of this. She'd be captured for sure--or killed.

But what, was she going to surrender? Go down without a fight? No way.

Jessie's birthday gifts had all been of the practical variety. As a knot of soldiers neared her position, Yuffie hurled a flashbang over the crates and braced herself. She leapt out after the bang, her shuriken flashed through the disoriented soldiers, and she ran for better cover. Someone fired at her from the catwalk.

"Watch your aim," she heard Tseng say from above. "We want her alive."

For what? Yuffie wondered. Information? Leverage against her friends? A public execution?

She didn't want any part of it.

She got a bead on Tseng's location and hurled a Bolt spell at him. One of the soldiers beside him went down, but Tseng dodged it. Yuffie ducked back down.

Only for a Bolt spell to hit her in turn. She was on the floor before she knew what had happened, and she felt it in every muscle. Her hand had a death grip on her shuriken, but she couldn't get herself to move before another knot of soldiers had reached her. Two of them grabbed her and hauled her up, while a third pried her shuriken from her fingers.

Finally she managed to jerk her arms, struggling, but it was too late. They had her.

"Have you got her materia?" asked Tseng, coming down the steps to join his men.

Her materia! Her mind was sluggish as she tried to pull a spell together. One of the soldiers found her bangle and pulled it off her wrist. The spell fell apart.

Tseng pulled the helmet from her head. "So," he said, "I suppose you _were_ still in Cosmo Canyon after all. Stupid move, trying to do this on your own."

"Bite me," Yuffie retorted.

"I'll let the President decide what to do with you," Tseng said. "I'll be speaking with him soon enough."

Yuffie could feel in her stomach that the Gelnika was in the last stages of its descent. She considered throwing up on the soldiers restraining her but decided it'd be about as unpleasant for her as for them.

The wheels touched down on the landing strip. Yuffie shut her eyes.

When the cargo hold opened its doors, the sound of rain reached her ears. A downpour darkened the early morning, and standing outside the ship waiting were more soldiers, one of them carrying an umbrella for someone else.

It wasn't Rufus.

A woman in a red dress. Yuffie had never seen her before in person, just in pictures and TV clips from before Holy. Everyone had thought she was dead, and even through the rain there seemed to be something strange about her face, like a scar, maybe.

"What's this?" asked Scarlet.

"An intruder," Tseng answered her, and as he motioned, the soldiers began to manhandle Yuffie from the ship. "I'd guess she's the one who found out about our plans for the Huge Materia, but we'll have to question her to be certain."

"And did you get it? The Huge Materia?"

Tseng nodded. "It's secured on board."

"The Huge Materia and an interrogation to look forward to... That's just the pick-me-up I needed."

Yuffie glared at Scarlet as the soldiers dragged her past, but the woman wasn't looking at her. Neither was Tseng. Like she wasn't a threat any longer, just another piece of cargo to be catalogued by their underlings.

They weren't looking at her.

The rain drenched her almost instantly, matting her hair to her head and running down her forehead. The temperature couldn't be far above freezing, and she started to shiver, but she wasn't worried about that yet.

The airfield wasn't just built over the town below, it extended out over the ocean, a little ways. Was the water deep enough? How high up were they? She wished she'd studied the base schematics thoroughly enough to know. Jessie would have.

Yuffie struggled against her captors, slowing their progress towards the base, trying to buy herself time. There was water everywhere. She was, literally, in her element.

She thought back to that day by the river. The water slowing, starting to freeze.

The water turned to ice beneath the soldiers' feet and they slipped. They took her with them when they fell, but they lost their hold on her. She pulled one of their batons from its holster as she scrambled to her feet, and knocked back their grasping hands. People began shouting. Yuffie raced for the edge of the airstrip.

_Oh Leviathan, at least let it be high tide_ , she thought. Rifle fire sounded behind her, and she leapt.

Something struck her side before she dropped. She fell with the rain, and the water beneath slammed into her, a wall of cold breaking against her body. Her world went black.

Warmth enveloped her, like floating on the river in the dead of the summer heat.

Yuffie opened her eyes.

She floated some meters beneath the surface of the ocean, the rain making endless patterns on the waves above. It should have been dark and turbulent, but it was neither. Floating not far above her was someone else, a familiar figure.

"Mom!" Her voice rang out clear through the water. She didn't give a thought to breathing.

The warmth of her mother's smile was like the warmth all around her. "Yuffie... I'm so glad we can finally speak."

"There's so much... I wanna ask you," Yuffie said, her thoughts racing. She'd barely had the chance to know her mother. Those too-short days together between war campaigns, naming the fish in the koi pond together as her mother carded her fingers through her hair... There were things in Yuffie's basement, the basement of her mother's house, that must have had a history, but Yuffie didn't know it.

What did she think of what Yuffie wanted for Wutai now? Was she proud?

How had she died?

Godo had never told her. No one had told her. Yuffie had made it up over the years, imagining an ever grander final stand. She'd gone out fighting. She must have.

"I don't have all the answers." Kasumi's smile grew rueful. "You're my child, and I am your mother, but I'm also not. Things are fluid here. Wishes and memories are shared, and... slip away."

"Are you... talking about the Lifestream?"

"The Lifestream is an ocean," said her mother, "and Leviathan swims its currents. You were so small when I had to leave you... but those currents connected us even so."

Yuffie felt the thought take shape, slowly. Her mother was in the Lifestream, a part of the Planet, just like Leviathan was a part of the Planet. The dreams of her mother, the feeling that Leviathan had been trying to talk to her, they were one and the same. Her mother was a part of Leviathan?

Her mother's smile held the answer, even though Yuffie hadn't voiced the question aloud, and her mother didn't say it.

"Yuffie," she said instead, "the Planet is in danger. I think you know that. With everything it's lost, new life won't grow quickly enough to restore it."

Was she saying the Planet was dying? Yuffie shook her head, feeling her hair sway through the water with the motion. "Aeris would know."

"There's still time."

"But you said--"

"Listen," Kasumi interrupted. A command, gentle but firm. "In Wutai we know this, too. _All_ things are meant to return to the ocean. Everything connected, flowing into each other. Even the gods ebb and flow with our lives. The Planet's knowledge was never meant to be captured, unchanging."

"The Huge Materia..." Yuffie murmured. "We have to return it to the Planet."

"Yes."

"But how? No one knows how to do that."

Her mother floated closer to her, and laid her hand against Yuffie's cheek. "Listen closely..."


End file.
